Reading Paul in Context: Explorations in Identity Formation: Essays in Honour of William S. Campbell 9781472550774, 9780567024671

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Abbreviations AB ABD ANRW ASCSA BBR BCH BDAG

Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt American School of Classical Studies at Athens Bulletin for Biblical Research Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique Bauer, W., F. W. Danker, W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd edn BDF Blass, F., A. Debrunner and R. W. Funk. A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature BibInt Biblical Interpretation BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly EHS Europäische Hochschulschriften EKKNT Evangelisch-katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament HTR Harvard Theological Review ICC International Critical Commentary IGRR Inscriptiones Graecae ad Res Romanas Pertinentes Int Interpretation JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JBS Journal of Biblical Studies JBV Journal of Beliefs and Values JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSQ Jewish Studies Quarterly LSJ A Greek-English Lexicon, ed. H. G. Liddell, R. Scott and H. S. Jones NASB New American Standard Bible NIB New Interpreter’s Bible MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology Neot Neotestamentica NJB New Jerusalem Bible NovT Novum Testamentum NRSV New Revised Standard Version NTS New Testament Studies

viii RB RHPR RSV SBL SEÅ SP TDNT VC WBC ZAW ZNW

Abbreviations Revue biblique Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses Revised Standard Version Society of Biblical Literature Svensk exegetisk årsbok Sacra Pagina Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. ed. G. Kittel and G. Friedrich Vigiliae christianae Word Biblical Commentary Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der ältenKirche

Contributors Robert L. Brawley, Albert G. McGraw Professor of New Testament Emeritus, McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois. Terence L. Donaldson, Lord and Lady Coggan Professor of New Testament Studies, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Ontario. Kathy Ehrensperger, Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies, University of Wales, Trinity St David, Wales. Neil Elliott, Adjunct Faculty member in Biblical Studies, Metropolitan State University, Saint Paul, Minnesota and United Theological Seminary, New Brighton, Minnesota. Robert Jewett, Visiting Professor of New Testament, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany. Kar Yong Lim, Lecturer in New Testament Studies, Seminari Theoloji Malaysia (Malaysia Theological Seminary), Seremban, Malaysia. Mark D. Nanos, Soebbing Visiting Scholar, Rockhurst University, Kansas City, Missouri. Daniel Patte, Professor of Religious Studies and Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. Ian E. Rock, Principal, Codrington College, Barbados, West Indies. Calvin J. Roetzel, Sundet Professor of New Testament and Christian Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ekkehard W. Stegemann, Professor of New Testament, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland. Jerry L. Sumney, Professor of Biblical Studies, Lexington Theological Seminary, Lexington, Kentucky.

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J. Brian Tucker, Associate Professor of New Testament, Moody Theological Seminary, Plymouth, Michigan. Magnus Zetterholm, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.

Editors’ Preface For decades William S. Campbell has been a key participant in the scholarly conversation in searching for new ways of reading and understanding Paul. Bill, as his friends, colleagues and students know him, is an engaged scholar who not only has challenged and enriched the scholarly community but has introduced and guided numerous students of all levels to the passion of theological and exegetical thinking in context. His research has always been driven by his conviction that true scholarship should serve the wider community, and his concern for the relevance of biblical interpretation and theology for contemporary church and society is evident not only in his publications but throughout his entire career. It is not an accident that one of the cornerstones of his research, the emphasis on reading Paul in his socio-political and religious-cultural context, applies vice versa to his understanding of the role of the interpreter. In as much as Paul’s theologizing must be seen in the context of his life and activities, so is the interpreter’s context a key factor in the process of interpretation. Bill’s journey began on the family farm in Northern Ireland, a beginning that left its indelible mark on him, not least in his love for nature and the realia of life. He earned his BA from Queen’s University, Belfast, spent a year of studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, and after completing his theological education was ordained to the ministry in the Presbyterian Church of Ireland; he earned BDs from London University and Trinity College Dublin, the latter with a thesis on ‘The Doctrine of Election in the Theology of John Calvin and Karl Barth’. After four years as a minister of the 1st Presbyterian Church of Killyleagh he embarked on doctoral studies at the Universities of Edinburgh and Tübingen under the supervision of professors Hugh Anderson, R. A. S. Barbour, Ernst Käsemann, and Otto Michel, resulting in his PhD thesis ‘The Purpose of Paul in the Letter to the Romans: A Survey of Chapters I–XI with particular reference to Chapters IX–XI’. Bill’s academic career began as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies at Sunderland Polytechnic (later University of Sunderland) from 1970–75. There followed a call to Westhill College, Selly Oak, Birmingham as Head of Religious and Theological Studies from 1975–94, Bill remaining there in a new role as Research Reader in Religious and Theological Studies from 1995–97. After a year at King’s College University of London, he moved to the University of Wales, Lampeter where he has been teaching Biblical Studies since 1998 until the present.

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During his long career Bill’s main concern has been his students. He was and is a teacher who embodies his educational convictions, providing support to his students with challenge, patience, seriousness and humour. He believes in working with students from where they are and in supporting them to grow to their full potential. His educational and academic commitments led him, together with Marius C. Felderhof, to initiate and launch the first educational degree in the UK in Islamic Studies (BEd in Islamic Studies) at Westhill in 1991, complemented later by a BA in Islamic Theology. He has supervised many PhD students, and among numerous other commitments was secretary of the British New Testament Society from 1985–90, Chairman of the Birmingham Council of Christians and Jews 1984–98, and has been editor of the Journal of Beliefs and Values since 1977. This brief reference to the context of Bill’s scholarly achievements would be incomplete if we did not mention one of the aspects most important for him, that is, the community of learners and researchers. In as much as Bill always emphasized that Paul could never be properly understood merely as an individual, but only as part of a network of people, that is, a community, so should Bill’s innovative contribution to scholarship be seen as part of an ongoing conversation of a community of scholars. This is particularly evident in the fact that he has been an active participant in two significant SBL projects; first, in the ‘Pauline Theology’ group from 1988–97, which resulted in the publication of the conversations in four volumes on Pauline theology, two of these containing Bill’s written contributions. The subsequent ‘Romans Through History and Cultures’ seminar group provided a forum for an ongoing conversation of this most influential of the Pauline letters from 1997 to the present, and has resulted in the publication of a series of eventually ten volumes; Bill’s major written contributions to this seminar, significantly, are found in the first and last volumes of the series. Possibly because he knew from experience how enriching sharing in the diversity of ways of life can be, Bill was also very much aware of the inherent dangers if these were played off against each other with all too often dreadful consequences. His commitment to teaching and research alike mirror this. Bill’s curiosity and passion to explore afresh, and not to be content with established, theological and exegetical answers if they were not ethically viable, witness to his integrity as an excellent and innovative scholar and a dedicated teacher. His contribution to the exploration of identity formation at the origins of Judaism and Christianity, and Paul’s role in this, is driven by the concern for acknowledging particular identities, that is, the recognition of diversity, as constitutive of unity, both socially as well as theologically. The present volume of essays in honour of Bill’s work and of him as a colleague, teacher and friend engages with key aspects of this lifelong focus of his teaching and research. The essays continue a conversation that has its roots in the past, thus there are friends of Bill who have been companions on the journey and in the conversation for a long time like Robert L. Brawley, Robert Jewett, Daniel Patte and Calvin Roetzel. New friends and colleagues whose paths crossed with Bill’s further along the route and who engaged in



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the conversation are Terence Donaldson, Neil Elliott, Mark D. Nanos and Jerry L. Sumney. More recent travel companions are Ekkehard W. Stegemann and Magnus Zetterholm. This fine group of conversation partners is joined by a group of former students, who had the privilege to be introduced to the conversation by Bill, namely Ian E. Rock, Kathy Ehrensperger, Kar Yong Lim and J. Brian Tucker. In all of these contributions, colleagues and friends present aspects of their exploratory journey, sharing with Bill the interest and passion of investigating Paul’s letters in depth and breadth in relation to issues that matter most to them. They continue in the conversation on topics of shared interest such as Romans; identity formation; diversity; and the interrelationship of political, social, theological and christological aspects of Paul’s letters. This volume does not offer a consensus view on the theme of identity and context in relation to Paul. It represents a lively diversity of interpretations and, as such, is an expression of the respect and integrity that is vital for the scholarly community, which after all is and remains at its best a community of learners. As such, the volume not only presents tribute to Bill but is also a reflection of that which he advocated in his life and work: respect and recognition of diversity. It is hoped that, as such, this volume may contribute to stimulate the fascinating and important conversation of communities of learners in the academy, the church and society. J. Brian Tucker Plymouth, Michigan, USA Kathy Ehrensperger Lampeter, Wales, UK March 2010

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Chapter 1

Coexistence and Transformation: Reading the Politics of Identity in Romans in an Imperial Context Ekkehard W. Stegemann Frequently inspired by postcolonial approaches, recent years have seen the emergence of readings of Paul in the context of Roman imperial rhetoric and especially of his letter to the Romans.1 According to one of the latest contributions to this research, the ‘rhetorical-critical approach to Romans’ attempts above all to ‘situate the rhetoric of Romans in a complex field of discourses in which the themes and tropes of imperial ideology were both abundant and powerful’.2 These interpretations tie in with prior studies, for example by Dieter Georgi, who demonstrated that keywords of Paul’s rhetoric like eu0agge/lion, ku/riov, ui9o\v qeou=, swth/r or swthri/a, pi/stiv, dikaiosu/nh, ei0rh/nh, o0rgh/ etc. bear close resemblance to Roman imperial language.3 Even if most of these are used in the Septuagint and in other Jewish documents written in Greek, it is quite appropriate to assume that at least in Greek-speaking areas some of the terms mentioned, and possibly also additional catchwords, did actually inherently and almost naturally evoke the discursive cultural and semantic context of Roman imperial terminology. This is particularly true for example with regard to the Greek term eu0agge/lion. This term takes up the well-known political rhetoric 1. Cf. for example J. D. Crossan and J. L. Reed, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 2004); N. Elliott, Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995); R. A. Horsley (ed.), Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997); L. Schottroff, ‘“Gebt dem Kaiser, was dem Kaiser gehört, und Gott, was Gott gehört”. Die theologische Antwort der urchristlichen Gemeinden auf ihre gesellschaftliche und politische Situation’, in L. Schottroff, Befreiungserfahrungen. Studien zur Sozialgeschichte des Neuen Testaments (Kaiser: München, 1990), pp. 184–216; M. Tellbe, Paul between Synagogue and State: Christians, Jews, and Civic Authorities in 1 Thessalonians, Romans, and Philippians (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell International, 2001). 2. N. Elliott, The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008) p. 21. 3. D. Georgi, Theocracy in Paul’s Praxis and Theology (ET Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991).

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related to the Roman Empire and the monumental celebration of Augustus’ birthday, ‘the birthday of the God’, or the beginning of his rule.4 Thus, for many interpreters of Romans the discursive cultural and semantic context of Roman imperial language actually begins with the very first lines of the letter, in which Paul describes the gospel of God as the proclamation of Jesus Christ’s accession to power, as Son of God and Lord (1.3-4). Recently some studies have drawn attention to some other keywords. Christian Strecker, for instance, has discussed in detail how pi/stiv bears similarities with the key cultural Roman concept of fides, faithfulness.5 And Reinhard von Bendenmann has pointed out, that o0rgh\ qeou=, wrath of God, could be read as resonating and engaging with the key topic of a well-attested discussion on ira dei or ira deum in Rome in the period of the early empire.6 Other scholars note additional terms and topics as relevant and maintain that Romans as a whole is dealing in depth with Roman imperial ideology and propaganda.7 Decades before the emergence of the new interpretation of Paul in Roman imperial context, A. Deissmann had already noted significant parallels in Paul’s letters, particularly in the language of ancient inscriptions.8 Most recent research, however, refers more to Latin writers of the early empire. Whilst Deissmann assumed that there is at least ‘a silent protest’9 behind these parallels, scholars today are more explicit and speak of a political anti- or counter-imperial or ‘empire-critical’10 message, meaning that there are signals or overtones in Paul’s texts, which evidently imply an anti-Roman ‘gospel’ or allude at least to a hidden political sub-text. N. T. Wright summarizes this message as follows: ‘At every point, therefore, we should expect what we in fact find: that for Paul, Jesus is Lord and Caesar 4. Cf. C. Ettl, ‘Der “Anfang der Evangelien”. Die Kalenderinschrift von Priene und ihre Relevanz für die Geschichte des Begriffs euangelion. Mit einer Anmerkung zur Frage nach der Gattung der Logienquelle’, in S. Brandenburger and Th. Hieke (eds), Wenn drei das gleiche sagen – Studien zu den ersten drei Evangelien (Münster: LIT-Verlag, 1998), pp. 121–39, esp. 131. 5. C. Strecker, ‘Fides – Pistis – Glaube. Kontexte und Konturen einer Theologie der “Annahme” bei Paulus’, in M. Bachmann (ed.), Lutherische und Neue Paulusperspektive. Beiträge zu einem Schlüsselproblem der exegetischen Diskussion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), pp. 223–50. 6. R. von Bendenmann, ‘“Zorn” und “Zorn Gottes” im Römerbrief’, in D. Sänger and U. Mell (eds), Johannes und Paulus. Exegetische Studien zur paulinischen und johanneischen Theologie und Literatur, Festschrift Jürgen Becker (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), pp. 179–215. 7. Not yet available to me was D. Wallace, The Gospel of God: Romans as Paul’s Aeneid (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2008). 8. Cf. A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World (trans. L. R. M. Strachnan, 2nd edn; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1927), pp. 342–78. 9. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, p. 359. 10. D. C. Lopez, Apostle to the Conquered: Reimagining Paul’s Mission (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), p. 8



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is not.’11 And Crossan and Reed maintain ‘that to proclaim Jesus as Son of God was deliberately denying Caesar his highest title’.12 But although ku/riov was indeed ‘a common title of the emperor in the middle of the first century ce,13 the question needs to be asked whether referring to Jesus as ku/riov at the same time implies that the ruling Caesar is not the Lord, or is not anymore. However, the political admonition in Rom. 13.1-7 actually seems to speak another language, namely one of ruler-legitimation and exhortation to obedience (and obedience to the emperor and Caesar does not seem to be excluded). Thus voices have increased recently which advise us to be cautious in presupposing that Paul is interacting with specific ‘hidden transcripts’14 or concrete political discourses in Rome or even with anti-imperial ones.15 Hence, I think, although recent research has at least presented solid arguments for reading Romans against the background of Roman political rhetoric in a broad sense, it remains an open question whether and how Paul can be seen as interacting directly and deliberately with political discourses, and whether he does so in a counter-imperial manner, whilst at the same time admonishing his audience in Rome to subjugate to the present rulers because they are instituted by God. Tellbe tries to square the circle when he argues that ‘At the same time as he affirms the political rights of the authorities, he seems intentionally to redefine and challenge central concepts and values in the imperial propaganda.’16 And Elliott ‘recognize(s) that Paul never provides a systematic or comprehensive critique of the emperor (whom he never names) or of the empire as such’17 and rather opines, that Paul is (only) dealing (indirectly) with imperial ideology by directly addressing specific tendencies among Christ-followers in Rome. Romans according to him is ‘Paul’s attempt to counteract the effects of imperial ideology within the Roman congregation’,18 not least of anti-Jewish tendencies. These suggestions are worth considering. But the crucial point, with which I shall deal here, is whether and how Paul’s gospel 11. N. T. Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press 2009), p. 69 (italics mine). 12. Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, p. 11 (italics mine). 13. Tellbe, Paul between Synagogue and State, p. 201. 14. Elliott (cf. n. 2) and others take up the concept of Scott that ‘public transcripts’ are often accompanied by hidden and subversive discourses (‘hidden transcripts’): J. C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts of Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). 15. Critical, for example, is C. Bryan, Render to Caesar: Jesus, the Early Church, and the Roman Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 91–93; A. Standhartinger, ‘Die paulinische Theologie im Spannungsfeld römisch-imperialer Machtpolitik. Eine neue Perspektive auf Paulus, kritisch geprüft anhand des Philipperbriefs’, in F. Schweitzer (ed.), Religion, Politik und Gewalt (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlag, 2006), pp. 364–82; S. Krauter, Studien zu Röm 13, 1-7. Paulus und der politische Diskurs der neronischen Zeit (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). 16. Tellbe, Paul between Synagogue and State, p. 206. 17. Elliott, Arrogance of Nations, p. 15. 18. Elliott, Arrogance of Nations, p. 158.

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and its proclamation of Jesus Christ as Son of God in power and Lord (Rom. 1.4) could coexist with the legitimation of the present and existing authorities as bearers of a divine mandate. If we take Rom. 13.1 (‘Let every person be subject to the authorities being above him …’) and specifically the phrase ai9 de\ ou}sai u9po\ qeou= tetagme/nai ei0si/n seriously, then Paul does not deny the present Roman rulers’ (of whichever rank) appointment or ordinance by God. But, at the same time, it is apparent that his gospel declares only Jesus Christ as the Son of God in power and as ‘our Lord’. 1. ‘Apocalyptic’ Jewish Language versus Roman Imperial Language? Reading Romans in a Roman imperial context does not exclude the recognition that Paul’s words and message belong at the same time and to an even greater extent to a Jewish cultural concept, more precisely to an ‘apocalyptic’19 or ‘theocentric’ or ‘messianic’ Jewish language. Admittedly C. Bryan stresses this very difference in his critique of the counter-imperial reading of Paul, ‘Christians were using some of the same words about Jesus as pagans used about Caesar, but they were hardly using them in the same context, or meaning anything like the same thing by them.’20 But Jewish culture and especially its ‘apocalyptic’ or ‘messianic’ version in some sense represents imperial rhetoric too. At least since the book of Daniel, with its notion of the ‘God of heaven’ as the one who ‘removes kings and establishes kings’ (Dan. 2.21) and who ‘will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed’ (Dan. 2.44; 7.14), there is even a genuine Jewish contribution to the discourse of universal empires imposed upon Jews by Greek and Roman domination.21 Thus Daniel includes on the one hand a notion of translatio imperii, which means that God is the one who has appointed kings or rulers (Dan. 2.37), and on the other hand, that he will also set an end to all earthly rulers and kingdoms and establish a divine, enduring kingdom through the Son of man (Dan. 7.13) and/or the people of the saints (Dan. 7.27). In Jewish ‘apocalypticism’ the vision of an everlasting, divinely established kingdom actually is not necessarily combined with the book of Daniel’s speculative idea of the succession of empires (successio imperii) and its scheme of descending patterns of metals.22 There are ‘apocalyptic’ or ‘messianic’ and other Jewish texts which only speak of a displacement of the foreign (or earthly) kings or rulers by an everlasting kingdom of God or his Messiah etc. Not only is there a common Jewish tradition but there is also a Roman (and Greek) one that rulers have got their appointment by

19. I follow the pragmatic usage of the term by J. J. Collins here; cf. J. J. Collins (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism – Volume 1: The Origins of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity (New York and London: Continuum, 2000), pp. xiii–xiv. 20. Bryan, Render to Caesar, p. 91. 21. Cf. Horsley (ed.), Paul and Empire, pp. 142–45. 22. Pace Krauter, Studien zu Röm 13, 1-7, p. 180.



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divine distribution or ordinance.23 Where Daniel seems to adopt the Greek idea of universal history represented by the scheme of the four human races characterized by descending metals,24 Roman texts take up this pattern and transform it into the idea of a succession of ages, and present at the same time even analogies to the ‘messianic’ or ‘apocalyptic’ Jewish concept of an everlasting kingdom/empire. If Virgil has Jupiter promise a future to the mother of Aeneas, in which he, Jupiter, will give to Aeneas’ descendants, namely to the Romans, a ‘dominion without end’ (imperium sine fine), that is, an empire without ‘bounds and periods’ (Aen. 1.278–79), he speaks of God like the book of Daniel as the one who appoints to dominion and who, at the end of history, will grant a universal (without boundaries) and everlasting reign (without periods). Comparable to Jupiter’s prophecy in Virgil’s Aeneid are the counter-imperial promises in the book of Daniel, which refer to the end of the fourth (that is, the Greek) empire, which, in the history of reception was either related to the Roman Empire (cf. 4 Ezra 12.11-12), or complemented by a fifth empire, that is, the Roman dominion (cf. Sib 4.102-4).25 However, Jupiter’s ‘promise … is simply triumphant counter-propaganda’, which is aimed against ‘the enemies of Rome, who had to endure the Augustan peace’ and who waited for ‘the end of the city, and also against Romans who ‘themselves had feared’ Rome’s future demise.26 Texts of (‘apocalyptic’) Jewish tradition presaging an oriental universal ruler are to be found among the expectations of Rome’s enemies and are mirrored also in Roman literature.27 Imperial rhetoric could always simultaneously be counter-imperial and vice versa. If we read Paul, and Romans in particular, with regard to Roman imperial discourses, we have to reckon with more than just the possibility that the letter is formulated in an already existing Jewish and Roman framework of an imperial and counter-imperial ideological competition. Hence, the discourse-formation of domination and empire predates Paul’s participation in it and the cultural concept of Jewish (apocalyptic, messianic) traditions predetermines it. But the same is correct also for Augustan imperial ideology, as Wallace-Hadrill has demonstrated in a brilliant but often ignored article in which he reads Roman imperial writers like Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Seneca etc. and especially the notion of a golden age against the background of Jewish

23. Cf. Bryan, Render to Caesar, pp. 180–88. 24. Cf. A. Momigliano, ‘The Origins of Universal History’, in idem, On Pagans, Jews and Christians (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), pp. 31–57. 25. Cf. K. Koch, Daniel 1–4 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2005), p. 205. 26. H. Cancik, The End of the World, of History, and of the Individual in Greek and Roman Antiquity, in Collins (ed.), Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, pp. 84–125, esp. 119. 27. Cf. H. Schwier, Tempel und Tempelzerstörung. Untersuchungen zu den theologischen und ideologischen Faktoren im ersten jüdisch-römischen Krieg (66–74 n. Chr.) (Freiburg und Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Freiburg, Schweiz, und Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), pp. 202–50.

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and not least Pauline ‘messianic’ ideas.28 But even if Virgil was not familiar with Jewish ‘messianic’ or ‘apocalyptic’ traditions (although this is assumed by Wallace-Hadrill and others with good reason29), Cancik’s perception of Virgil’s ‘eschatology’ as ‘realized apocalypticism’, and of Rome as having its demise behind it, and ‘(t)he epoch, which was supposed to come (venturum saeculum)’, as now having arrived, is convincing.30 Read, however, in the context of such Roman ‘post-eschatological’ mythmaking, Paul’s eu0agge/lion is not only ‘good news’ for Jews and Gentiles but does encompass ‘ill news’ at the same time, in that it announces a universal divine tribunal. It is not through, but along with the gospel that ‘God’s wrath from heaven is being revealed against any (and every31) ungodliness and injustice’ (Rom. 1.18). Although God’s wrath from heaven has not yet arrived on earth (and it is this spatial distance that is the reason for its eventual advent), its future appearance on earth is already determined and inescapable for all, Jews and Gentiles alike, who are under sin or have sinned (Rom. 3.9 and 23). Those who do not participate in the salvation which the gospel provides to faithful believers (Rom. 1.16-17) will soon be confronted with God’s ultimate judgement. For Paul, Rome and all rulers and powers do not have their demise behind, but rather before them, since only the faithful followers of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved from God’s tribunal. This reading of course is a rather artificial literary comparison to Virgil’s Augustan theology, because it does not take into account what the reality of even Augustus’ rule was, and what some Roman elites thought about it already during Augustus’ lifetime. Ovid, for example, ‘is constantly flippant at the expense of ideas treated as sacred by Virgil or Horace’.32 He admits ironically, that the present times represent the golden age. But he loathes, for instance, what was proclaimed by Virgil and Horace so idealistically, when he defines the present age as ‘golden’, since ‘most honour comes from gold’ and even ‘love is won by gold’ (auro conciliatur amor).33 For Ovid, Augustus’ golden age is characterized by greed. Although Ovid does not deny the achievements of the pax Augusta, he notices the massive distortions with which the prophets of Augustus’ empire presented the real consequences that the establishment of the Principate had had – even and not least on Roman aristocratic life.34 There were those who already suffered 28. A. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘The Golden Age and Sin in Augustan Ideology’, Past & Present 95 (May 1982), pp. 19–36. 29. Cf. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Golden Age’, p. 21. 30. Cancik, End of the World, p. 119. 31. ‘Any’ is probably better than ‘every’ or ‘all’, for the position of pa= v without article before the noun indicates any (and every) godlessness and injustice whatsoever its nature maybe. 32. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Golden Age’, p. 27. 33. Ovid, Ars amatoria, ii.277s.; cf. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Golden Age’, p. 27. 34. Cf. P. A. Miller, Subjecting Verses: Latin Love Elegy and the Emergence of the Real (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 164 and passim; B. Dufallo, The Ghosts of the Past: Latin Literature, the Dead, and Rome’s Transition to a Principate (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2007), pp. 125–26 and passim.



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from disillusionment concerning the deteriorated state of the Roman Empire and especially about Augustus’ successors’ character and behaviour; as Larry Welborn in an excellent article recently stated, ‘Literature contemporary with the inception of Paul’s mission gives expression to a deepening disillusionment with the realities of Roman rule, especially in the aftermath of the Caligula crisis.’35 And this disenchantment is present in both Roman and Jewish literature, represented, for example, by Seneca in his bitter satire on the ‘pumpkinification’ of Claudius and by Philo in his Legatio ad Gaium. Both are witnesses of a broad elitist disgust not least of Caligula’s and Claudius’ obsession of being perceived, and worshipped as, gods. But although Seneca’s Apocolocynthosis rebukes unsparingly the afflictions, obvious character flaws and manifestly cruel crimes of Claudius, he glorifies the new Caesar, Nero, at the same time and in the same work. Thus the Caesar of Paul’s and his audience’s time was depicted as someone with whom the golden age would return. And Lucan, T. Calpurnius Siculus in his political eclogues, and other contemporaries of Nero, did the same. Even Nero’s deification during his lifetime was proposed.36 When compared with these writings, Paul in his letter to the Romans implicitly develops an almost radical and bleak perspective about what the future holds for rulers and Gentiles who are not joining the congregations of Christ-followers and their faith. For him the world has arrived at a very critical stage, with an impending universal demise on the one hand and the presence of the liberating force of salvation mediated by the gospel and its revelation of divine dikaiosu/nh to its believers on the other (Rom. 1.16-18). The key theme of Romans is not only the gospel and God’s power of salvation mediated by the revelation or appearance of God’s dikaiosu/nh, which makes faithful believers righteous. The revelation of God’s wrath as soon coming into force is also part of it.37 There is, so to speak, a dysangelion, too. 2. Paul Refrains from Counter-Imperial Admonition, but Evokes an ‘Apocalyptic’ Concept of Divine Empowerment As is well known, Paul does not only refrain from calling for insurgence, sedition, resistance or any other countermeasures in Romans. He rather demands scrupulous compliance or even subordination with regard to the rulers, the e0cousi/ai and a1 rxontev, in Rom. 13.1-7. And he summons the readers to meet or to abide with everyday subjugation’s requirements, namely to pay fo/rov and te/lov, taxes and revenue. Although interpreters38 35. L. L. Welborn, ‘“Extraction from the Mortal Site”: Badiou on the Resurrection in Paul’, NTS 55 (2009), pp. 295–314, esp. 301. 36. Cf. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Golden Age’, p. 25; Krauter, Studien zu Röm 13, 1-7, pp. 61–71. 37. Cf. von Bendenmann, ‘“Zorn”’, p. 209. 38. A short and concise review of the history of interpretation and especially of the recent ‘counter-imperial’ analyses is to be found in Krauter, Studien zu Röm 13, 1-7, pp. 4–38.

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try to read Rom. 13.1-7 as almost implying a hidden agenda of empowering resistance, for example by means of irony,39 one can hardly ignore the author’s overt admonishing to subjugation and the explicit divine legitimation, which he (like the book of Daniel40) adds to the rulers’ power, ‘There is no authority except from God and those which exist have been set up by God’ (13.1). Of course, God appointed them to rule, but he did not deliver to them his power. And Romans 13 reveals also a ‘normative binding’,41 namely that every ruler’s actions as a delegate of God42 must not be a terror (fo/bov) to good conduct, but only to evil. God’s delegate (or agent, representative: dia/konov43) is working for your good (13.3-4). And as agents of God they have even the mandate to punish evildoers and to bring wrath against them. But there is not the slightest hint that the subjects are empowered to control rulers or to resist them, even if they abuse their mandate by God. If the rulers, however, are ‘appointed by God’ (tetagme/nai)44 and his institution or ordinance (diatagh/) grants them exercise of power, it could imply God’s sovereign right to bring his wrath also upon them, punish the misusers and withdraw the authority from them by giving it to someone else capable of using it in accordance with divine laws. However, the text does not elaborate on ‘this possibility for critique and limitation of ruling’.45 Rom. 13.1-7 does indeed not reveal any overt ideological critique of the Roman rulers or any hidden ethical admonition to defy on one’s own account those authorities who abuse their power. On the contrary, subjugation or subordination should be expressed in cases of everyday execution of power such as collecting taxes and tributes, preventing wrongdoing and crime by deterrence and punishment, and the expectation of respect/reverence (fo/bov) and honour (timh/). As Krauter states convincingly, Rom. 13.7 ‘names … central politico-social obligations of antique society’.46 Whether ‘due respect and due honour’ (13.7) could even include (passive) engagement in emperor-worship is not to be decided here, since the readers of Romans that Paul implies in the text did in all likelihood not belong to elitist social levels whose non-active participation would have been 39. Cf. T. L. Carter, ‘The Irony of Romans 13’, NovT 46 (3) (2004), pp. 209–28. 40. Cf. J. M. Scott, Paul and the Nations: The Old Testament and Jewish Background of Paul’s Mission to the Nations with Special Reference to the Destination of Galatians (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), p. 132. 41. Cf. Krauter, Studien zu Röm 13, 1-7, pp. 192–216. 42. Of course Paul refers to the God of Israel and of the Gentiles (Rom. 3.29) and not to Mars or Jupiter (cf. R. Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), p. 789. 43. Cf. J. N. Collins, Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 228; A. Hentschel, Diakonia im Neuen Testament. Studien zur Semantik unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Rolle von Frauen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), p. 160. 44. Jewett notes, that tetagme/nai ‘derives from military use, meaning arranged in rank and file’ and means ‘in the political sphere’ to be appointed (Romans, p. 789). 45. Krauter, Studien zu Röm 13, 1-7, p. 239. 46. Krauter, Studien zu Röm 13, 1-7, p. 249.



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conspicuous. And it is better to bypass the problem of Roman authorities’ exacting subjugation by forcing Christ-believers to revoke their faith in cultic worship of Rome’s gods and the emperor. The theme of martyrdom is probably a problem not raised in Romans, although death through the sword seems to be within its horizon (Rom. 8.35). But even later, in the wake of Roman criminalization of Christians – as indicated for the first time in Pliny’s famous letter to the Caesar Trajan47 – the issue of political resistance and non-subjugation is not linked with certain acts of disobedience or crimes but with the very name Christianus and the belonging to a Christian community. Martyrdom does not mean non-compliance with rulers as such, but with those who aim to crush Christians’ obedience to God and the confession of the Lord Jesus Christ by cursing Christ and sacrificing before Roman gods and their idols (including the one of Caesar Trajan). Anti-imperial readings of Romans 13 frequently wonder whether there is any possibility to adopt an ‘empire-critical’ reading of this pericope. Jewett even notes an apparent ‘disparity between apocalyptic hostility against the old age and its institutions throughout the Pauline corpus and the acknowledgement of the state as an abiding institution to which absolute obedience is owed in 13.1-7’.48 And he adds that ‘While Paul speaks of the “rulers of this age” with bitter resistance in 1 Cor. 2.8 and views the “principalities and powers” as opponents in Rom. 8.38, this passage seems to reflect a time when the church has made peace with the world.’49 However, the question is, whether Rom. 13.1-7 anticipates ‘the state as an abiding institution’. After all, 13.1-7 reveals a stupendous ‘theocentric’ perspective: there is no authority except from God; the existing ones are appointed by God; who resists, opposes the ordinance of God; God’s agent is the authority for your good; it is God’s agent as an avenger; authorities are ministers of God. That is to say: Paul uses qeo/v almost in profusion compared to the rest of chapter 13 (not once) and to the whole chapter 12 (only four times).50 Thus an ‘empire-critical’ reading of Rom. 13.1-7 seems not per se to be excluded. But it depends in principle on the ‘theocentric’ or ‘apocalyptic’ concept of the ordinance of power and the translatio imperii by God to the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence, Kathy Ehrensperger has expressed convincingly ‘The significant point Paul makes here, from an apocalyptic perspective, is that even the power of imperial Rome is only established in accordance with God’s will.’51 And the verse of 1 Cor. 2.6, which she cites, serves as a proof that Paul and those who are mature enough to understand the mystical wisdom about the present age, because God’s Spirit illuminates 47. Cf. E. W. Stegemann, Paulus und die Welt. Aufsätze (Ausgew. und hrsg. von C. Tuor und P. Wick; Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2005), pp. 169–91. 48. Jewett, Romans, p. 783. 49. Jewett, Romans, p. 783. 50. Cf. Krauter, Studien zu Röm 13, 1-7, p. 280. 51. K. Ehrensperger, Paul and the Dynamics of Power: Communication and Interaction in the Early Christ-Movement (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2007hb [2009pb]), p. 173.

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them to know that the rulers of this age … are doomed to pass away. The present passive participle of katarge/w does not mean that the rulers are already made powerless or ineffective. They are not yet abolished, but their passing away is in progress or will come soon. As in Rom. 13.3, Paul uses the noun a1 rxwn just once more. The plural in Rom. 13.3 and in 1 Cor. 2.6, 8 indicates that the noun does not mean transhuman demonic forces of evil, but earthly and human persons (cf. also: Mt. 20.25 [rulers of the gentiles]; Lk. 14.1 [the leaders of the Pharisees]; Jn. 12.42 [many even of the rulers believed in him]; Acts 4.8 [rulers of the people and elders]). This reading is supported by the context, in which Paul is dealing with the wisdom of influential and mighty elites.52 In 1 Cor. 15.24 Paul speaks abstractly of Christ’s rendering powerless any (and every) rule and any (and every) authority and power (o3tan katargh/s h| pa= san a0rxh\n kai\ pa= san e0cousi/an kai\ du/namin).53 This of course includes earthly rulers, authorities and powers, but demonic enemies probably as well (1 Cor. 15.25-26). Here we also learn that God’s ‘kingdom’ (basilei/a), the divine dominion,54 is delivered to Christ (since his resurrection), because it is said that he will give it back to God the father after his reigning (basileu/ein), that is, after he has put all his enemies under his feet. Paul apparently has his own version of translatio imperii and the succession of empires or ages, aeons or saecula (cf. 1 Cor. 10.11). It may even very well be that 1 Cor. 15.24-28 alludes to Dan. 2.44; 7.14, 26-27.55 But although the delivery of God’s, that is the Father’s, ‘kingdom’ to Christ, his son, has happened, Christ is not already exerting from heaven his divine power on earth. Christ indeed neither has already deprived all rulers and authorities of power, nor does his dominion only extend over the ‘church’. Rather the universal disempowerment will take place at his parousi/a and after the resurrection of his faithful followers – not before. But of course those who belong to Christ (oi9 tou= Xristou=) are already confessing his universal lordship on earth. Does this ‘apocalyptic’ concept occur in Romans, too? The first answer is that we do not find an overt statement in Romans comparable to 1 Cor. 2.6 or 15.24-26. But, conversely, we do not find Romans’ concept of the revelation of God’s wrath in 1 Corinthians. This underpins von Bendenmann’s assumption that Paul takes up a specific Roman discourse on ira dei only in the letter to the Romans.56 But it is also true that Romans 52. Cf. R. A. Horsley, ‘The First and Second Letters to the Corinthians’, in F. F. Segovia and R. S. Sugirtharajah (eds), A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 220–45, esp. 228; Krauter, Studien zu Röm 13, 1-7, p. 269. Krauter may be right to claim that not only Roman rulers are meant. 53. On ‘any’ see n. 31 above. 54. Obviously the noun basilei/a means the execution or the performance of the power of a king. 55. Cf. W. Schrage, Der Erste Brief an die Korinther (Zürich, Düsseldorf und Neukirchen-Vluyn: Benziger, Neukirchener, 2001), pp. 156–57. 56. Cf. note 6 above.



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reflects, like 1 Corinthians, the notion of translatio imperii and of succeeding ages or aeons. We will dwell on the notion of translatio imperii in Romans below and address the topic of successio imperii or saeculorum here only briefly. Paul opens his paraenesis of Rom. 12.1–15.13 with an antithetic exhortation: Do not be conformed [or: Do not conform yourselves] to this aeon/age/saeculum, but be transformed by a renewal of the mind … (12.2). Obviously the syntagma o9 ai0w\n ou{tov sends an ‘apocalyptic’ signal that is echoed in 13.11-14 by the term kairo/v, which characterizes the present segment in time as a ‘critical moment’,57 ‘The Critical Time’58 or the ‘hour of crisis’ (RSV). The following metaphor of the hour, in which it is high time to awake, because the night is far gone, day has drawn near, points to the imminence of the ‘daybreak’ and the coming salvation as the new day/ age to come. It has drawn nearer in the lifetime of the believers (13.11). As 12.2 belongs to the programmatic opening of the exhortations, 13.11-14 ‘serves as an effective climax’59 of them. Leander E. Keck captions the whole paraenetic section revealingly as ‘Daybreak Ethos’.60 But does that reveal that the political exhortation in 13.1-7 is relativized by the eschatological or ‘apocalyptic’ context? Surely not, because that would mean that Paul retracts his admonitions or tells his audience to take them with a grain of salt. What is relativized, however, is the duration of the rulers and authorities. They are doomed to pass away like the night. There is no Roma aeterna, no Roman imperium sine fine. But as long as the authorities exist, they are to be obeyed, not least for the sake of a peaceful cohabitation (cf. Rom. 12.18). 3. God has Designated Jesus Christ as the Divine Universal Ruler To find a text in Romans in which the author steers the reader at least sub-textually into a kind of counter-imperial idea, we must search for this ‘theocentric’ or ‘apocalyptic’ conception of translatio imperii by God to Christ. As already mentioned, many ‘empire-critical’ readings have found the very first verses of Romans to be a good candidate. However, the question is in what sense Rom. 1.3-4 is anti-imperial. ‘Is Paul using the traditional formula in order to support an alternative theory concerning true rulership and the legitimate princeps?’61 Or does ‘[t]he argument of Romans’ in general and in Rom. 1.3-4 in particular ‘revolve … around the question of which rule is truly righteous and which gospel has the power to make the world truly peaceful’, Christ’s or Caesar’s?62 Or is Paul thwarting 57. J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1993), p. 682. 58. Jewett, Romans, p. 816. 59. Jewett, Romans, p. 818. 60. L. A. Keck, Romans (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2005), p. 289. 61. Georgi, Theocracy, p. 86. 62. Jewett, Romans, p. 49; cf. also Tellbe, Paul between Synagogue and State, p. 202.

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the deification of the Caesars, which emerged overwhelmingly especially during Nero’s rule?63 Perhaps the opening lines are from the perspective of outsiders engaged in hidden or public Roman transcripts concerning specific discourses on the deification of, for example, Claudius or Nero. However, who among Paul’s addressees had to be assured of that? Of course Paul and his audience believed that Christ will soon bring an end to all powers, authorities and rulers – Caesar included. And in this respect he will prove to be the one who is in possession of God’s power, while the rulers of this aeon, although they are appointed by God, do of course not have God’s power at their disposal – Caesar included. In other words: Paul certainly did not have to tell his audience in Rome who the ‘true’ and peace-making (Son of) God and Lord is. Maybe this was part of his missionary preaching of the gospel elsewhere. However, the point is that Christ is in heaven and will exercise his divine power on earth, as we have mentioned above, but not until his appearance (parousi/a). This spatial and therefore (!) temporal distinction makes the difference. And a careful reading of Rom. 1.3-4 could give support to it. For the gospel from God (eu0agge/lion qeou=), to which Paul is ‘set apart’,64 does indeed convey the message that Jesus Christ is the Son of God in power and our (that is, Paul’s and his addressees’ in Rome) Lord (ku/riov). Paul in the praescriptio not only uses a remarkable compilation of imperial language, but states that God has designated Jesus Christ to be his son in power and therefore the ku/riov. By calling him our Lord the author reveals that he and his audience in Rome accept, obey and confess Jesus Christ as ku/riov (cf. Rom. 10.9) and that they are faithful believers of God and his gospel. Thus he assures himself and his readers in the letter again and again of their mutual commitment to Jesus Christ as their shared Lord (Rom. 1.4, 7; 4.24; 5.1, 11, 21; 6.23; 7.25; 8.39; 15.6, 30; 16.20). ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ’ or ‘Jesus Christ our Lord’ constitutes a major inclusio between Rom. 1.4 and 16.20 and also many minor inclusions. Eventually, Paul states that ‘we’ all belong to the Lord (Rom. 14.8, tou= kuri/ou e0sme/n). A revealing part of Paul’s ‘apocalyptic’ concept is that he relates the gospel to the Jewish and biblical expectation of a messianic ruler from David’s seed. Thus the gospel of God secures God’s promises given to Israel through the prophets (1.2), because it is about his son, who came from David’s house according to the flesh who was designated son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness from the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ, our Lord. 63. Cf. Elliott, Arrogance of Nations, pp. 70–72. 64. Cf. E. W. Stegemann, ‘“Set Apart for the Gospel” (Rom 1:1): Paul’s SelfIntroduction in the Letter to the Romans’, in P. Spitaler (ed.), Celebrating Paul: Festschrift in Honor of J. A. Fitzmyer and J. Murphy-O’Connor (Washington: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2010), pp. 231–47.



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The double ancestry of the Lord Jesus Christ, namely from God and from the royal house of David, is remarkable. His determination65 to become, or his ‘designation’66 as, Son of God in (a position of) power is also connected to an ‘apocalyptic’ horizon that is characterized by the outpouring of the divine spirit and the resurrection from the dead. The exceptional syntagma ‘spirit of holiness’ represents not simply the more usual expression ‘holy spirit’. Rather the genitive that qualifies ‘spirit’ reveals that holiness is the nature of the spirit: it effects holiness and involves holiness (cf. Rom. 5.5).67 If God had designated Jesus to become Son of God in a position of power according to the spirit of holiness, that very spirit stems from the dawning resurrection of the dead. Paul refers to eschatological events and not simply to the occurrence of Jesus’ individual resurrection. For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection is the initializing event of an apocalyptic schedule (cf. 1 Cor. 15.12, 13, 21, 42; Phil. 3.11). Johnson Hodge68 puts these verses in the context of Roman discourses on the legitimation of the rule of Caesar and Augustus, that is, in a context of genealogical founding myths.69 Julius Caesar, for example, claimed, according to Suetonius (Divus Julius 6.1), to be a descendant of a royal family and of the goddess Venus Genetrix. As C. Johnson Hodge has pointed out, this represents ‘a common conception in ancient Mediterranean cultures: you are your ancestors. In this way of thinking, one’s status, character, and identity are conferred by one’s forebears.’70 But that is only one side of the coin. The other is that ‘Christ’s double ancestry’,71 royal and divine, legitimizes his authority and the claim for him to fulfil divine promises to Israel’s ancestors. Virgil ranks Augustus comparably at the peak of the lineage, which started with Aeneas, the founding father of Rome, who himself was a descendant of the noble Trojan Anchises and the goddess Venus, and declares him as the one through whom the promise of a Roman Empire without end and boundaries will be fulfilled. Paul obviously claims a similar hybrid ancestry 65. I suggest to follow Th. Zahn in his translation of the passive participle o9risqei/j with ‘determined’ (bestimmt). This rightly avoids the often used ‘appointed’ or ‘established’, since the latter terms are misleading, and this for two reasons: (1) The verb o9ri/zw does not mean to appoint someone to an office, and (2) in contrast to the perfect passive participle a0fwrisme/noj in Rom. 1.1 o9risqei/v is an aorist. Paul does not speak from a present viewpoint, but refers to a perspective of Jesus’ earthly life and to what God has determined for him afterwards; cf. Th. Zahn, Der Brief des Paulus an die Römer (1st and 2nd edns; Leipzig: Deichert’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1910), pp. 39–40. 66. W. S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006), p. 113; cf. p. 124. 67. Cf. Zahn, Römer, p. 41. 68. Cf. C. Johnson Hodge, If Sons, then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 19–42. 69. Cf. T. Hölscher, ‘Mythen als Exempel der Geschichte’, in F. Graf (ed.), Mythos in mythenloser Gesellschaft: Das Paradigma Roms (Stuttgart, Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1993), pp. 67–88. 70. Johnson Hodge, If Sons, p. 19. 71. Johnson Hodge, If Sons, p. 30.

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for Jesus as Son of God and offspring of the royal house of David. Thereby God enacts his promise of the eschatological Davidic ruler. The allusion to 2 Samuel 7 is obvious. In Rom. 15.12, which constitutes a major inclusio with 1.3-4, Paul resumes this ‘founding myth’: the Davidic Messiah is, as a result of his resurrection, also the ruler of the Gentiles. However, the context here stresses the association that Christ has established between Israel and the Gentiles. Paul explicates his exhortation of the addressees to accept one another as Christ has accepted you to the glory of God (Rom. 15.7), that is, they are accepted to join Christ in the transformation to God’s children and thus to take part in God’s splendour (cf. Rom. 5.2; 8.17, 30; Phil. 3.21), which emanates from God and extends over all who dwell in God’s vicinity. If for Christ this transformation has already been completed by his resurrection, it is for those who belong to him, still ‘an ongoing process’.72 Paul states in Rom. 15.8-9a: v. 8a: v. 8b:

that Christ became (and is still73) a messenger/agent (dia/ konov) of circumcision for the truth of God, so that he confirms the promises given to the ancestors.

The following sentence is either parallel to v. 8b (1) or to v. 8a (2): (1) v. 9a: (so that74) the Gentiles , indeed (de/), glorify God for mercy.75 (2) v. 9a: (and that76) the Gentiles glorify God for mercy.

The particle de/ does not indicate a stringent adversative meaning, let alone a strong opposition. It could be also either connective (‘and’) – that alternative would well apply to version (2) – or emphasizing (‘indeed’) – that alternative would well apply to version (1).77 In any case, if Christ became and still is ‘circumcision’s messenger or agent’, his mission embraces both, the confirmation of God’s promises to Israel and (as a result of it) that Gentiles glorify God. Their praise for God’s mercy is contained in Christ’s mission, which enacts God’s promises given to Israel. Thereby God abides faithfully with his oracles (Rom. 3.2-3) and does not make a ‘new decision’.78 The syntagma dia/konov peritomh=v is often translated: Servant of the circumcised. But dia/ konov denotes a go-between, or an agent, respectively a 72. Campbell, Paul, p. 171. 73. Note the perfect tense: gegenh=sqai. 74. This grammatical decision is probably favoured, e.g. by Campbell, Paul, p. 120. 75. Verse 15.9a alludes to Ps. 85.9 LXX: pa/ nta ta\ e1qnh o3sa e0poi/hsav h3cousin kai\ proskunh/sousin e0nw/ pio/n sou ku/rie kai\ doca/sousin to\ onoma/ sou. 76. This decision is favoured with good reasons, e.g. by A. Reichert, Der Römerbrief als Gratwanderung: Eine Untersuchung zur Abfassungsproblematik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), pp. 303–04. 77. Cf. S. E. Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (2nd edn; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), p. 208. 78. Cf. Reichert, Römerbrief als Gratwanderung, p. 306.



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delegate or messenger of something or someone.79 And because the genitive peritomh=v stands without an article, it could not mean ‘the circumcised’. Hence dia/konov peritomh= v can reveal that Christ / the Messiah became either an intermediary between God and some of the circumcision – that is: Christ is God’s messenger toward circumcision, which term represents (metonymically) Jews, but not all of them – or the delegate or agent of circumcision, that is: he is circumcision’s messianic messenger. The latter reading would be in line with the prevailing use of dia/ konov connected with a noun in the (subjective) genitive case in Paul.80 For Paul, ‘circumcision’ does not only denote metonymically the ‘circumcised’ or the ‘Jews’, but is introduced in Romans also as the ‘signature’ of the righteousness on the basis of faith(fulness), the ‘seal’ or outward confirmation, which Abraham received ‘while he was still uncircumcised’ (Rom. 4.11). Therefore, Rom. 15.8 could point to Christ as the messenger of the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham, which contains a reference to the eschatological association of faithful Gentiles to Abraham’s descendants. Abraham himself received the circumcision as a sign ‘in order to be father of all believers in spite (or with the attendant circumstance) of the foreskin’81 and (in order to be82) ‘father of circumcision for those not from the circumcision (i.e., for the circumcised/ Jews83) only, but also for those walking in the footsteps of the faith which our father Abraham (has demonstrated) in (the status of) foreskin’ (Rom. 4.11-12).84 In other words: Abraham is not only a ‘hybrid’ forefather, having accordingly double descendants. Rather, as ‘circumcision’s father’ (note the absence of the definite article here as in dia/ konov peritomh=v) he includes also faithful Gentiles as his eschatological descendants. Hence I understand that Paul uses the term ‘circumcision/peritomh/’in Rom. 4.12 as a cipher. The most exclusive ‘identity marker’ of the Jews as Abraham’s descendants is at the same time the ‘sign’, which points out that on the basis of faith(fulness) Gentiles were made righteous and included in Abraham’s genuine lineage. According to Johnson Hodge, ‘faithfulness is Paul’s shorthand for the covenant between God and Abraham, a covenant which includes God’s promises of fertility and Abraham’s faithful response and begetting of

79. See note 43 above. 80. All other cases do not represent an objective genitive. Cf. the cases with anarthrous genitive, 2 Cor. 3.6 (new covenant delegates); 2 Cor. 6.4 (God’s agents); 11.15 (messengers of Satan disguised as messengers of righteousness); 11.23 (Christ’s messengers): Gal. 2.17 (Christ an intermediary or agent of sin); with article: cf. Rom. 16.1 (Phoebe is the delegate of the community of Cenchraea). 81. As in Rom. 2.27; 8.25; 14.20 etc. the preposition dia/ with the genitive in 4.11 characterizes the modality, the manner, or the attendant circumstance (‘with’ or dependent on the context even ‘in spite of’). 82. The phrase ei0v to\ einai } au0to\n of 4.11 rules 4.12a, too. 83. Here the preposition e1k reveals the notion of descent or kinship (cf. Johnson Hodge, If Sons, pp. 80–82). 84. I am aware that I am dissenting from a mainstream reading of these verses, but have to reserve an elaborate discussion of my interpretation for a future publication.

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Isaac’.85 However, this covenant includes Abraham’s trust in God’s promise, ‘that he will become father of many Gentiles (e0pi/steusen ei0v to\ gene/sqai au0to\n pate/ra pollw= n e0qnw= n) according to what had been said to him, So shall your seed/posterity be (ou3twv e1stai to\ spe/rma sou)’(4.18). However, this promised future inclusion of Gentiles to Abraham’s posterity is implied in the ‘sign, which consists in circumcision’ (Rom. 4.11). Rom. 15.8 calls therefore Christ ‘circumcision’s messenger/agent’, because he is the one to implement God’s promises given to the ancestors, that is, that indeed also the Gentiles praise God for mercy.86 The following context could endorse my reading of 15.8b, 9a, because the catena of biblical citations focuses predominantly on the Gentiles’ (e1qnh) association to Israel’s praise of God and their hope on the ‘scion of Jesse’ as their ruler as well. Disputed is indeed whether Rom. 15.9b, which cites the prototype of the Messiah, King David (Ps. 17.50 LXX or 2 Sam. 22.50 LXX), refers to Christ as speaker, ‘Therefore, I shall proclaim you among the Gentiles and sing praise to your name.’ Obviously, the ‘I’ of the citations is the ‘I’ of David, who ‘thanks God for victory in battle over his enemies, the “nations”’.87 Therefore a ‘messianic’ reading seems to suggest itself. But does that mean that ‘Jesus is speaking in David as the anointed one’?88 That is quite possible. The Davidic Messiah Jesus as the messianic king or Davidic Messiah leads the Gentiles – ‘subjugated’ to him by his apostles – in their faithful acknowledgement of the true God in heaven.89 In any case, it is the association of all Gentiles (pa/nta ta\ e1qnh) to God’s people, all its tribes (pa/ ntev oi9 laoi/),90 and their eschatological or messianic joining of Israel’s praise of the Lord (15.10-11), for which Christ is the agent. The citation of Isa. 11.10 in Rom. 15.12 resumes Rom. 1.3-4, as already mentioned: Paul ‘returns in Rom. 15.12 to Rom. 1.3-4, referring to Jesus as ‘born of the seed of David’. Even the expression e0c a0 nasta/sewv nekrw= n (from the resurrection of the dead) is echoed in the wording the LXX supplied for the shoot of Jesse: o9 a0nista/menov ‘who rises up to fulfill his messianic role’,91 that means his role as the messianic ruler and Lord over the Gentiles too. The verse ‘ E 1 stai h9 ri/za tou= ’Iessai/ kai\ o9 a0 nista/menov a1rxein e0qnw= n e0p’ au0tw|= e1qnh e0lpiou=sin’ ‘quotes slightly abridging the Greek 85. Johnson Hodge, If Sons, pp. 87–88. 86. Cf. Phil. 3.3: h9mei=v ga/ r e0sme/n h9 peritomh/ oi9 pneu/mati qeou= latreu/ontev kai\ kauxw/ menoi e0n Xristw|== I0 hsou=. 87. Fitzmyer, Romans, p. 706. 88. K. Wengst, ‘Freut euch, ihr Völker, mit Gottes Volk!’ Israel und die Völker als Thema des Paulus – ein Gang durch den Römerbrief (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008), p. 423; cf. for this ‘christological’ or ‘messianic’ reading also C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979), p. 745; B. Byrne, Romans (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), p. 432 (Christ as the ‘choirmaster’ of the Gentiles’ praise); et al. 89. According to an alternative reading, the ‘I’ of 15.9b represents the ‘I’ of Paul of 15.8 (cf., e.g., Jewett, Romans, p. 894). 90. ‘Tribes (of Israel)’ and not ‘nations’; cf. for instance Lk. 2.31; Acts 4.27. 91. Jewett, Romans, p. 896.



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text of the LXX’, which ‘introduces the idea of the Root of Jesse “ruling” the nations’92 (in contrast to MT, where the shoot of Jesse functions ‘as a sign for the nations/Gentiles’). Although e1stai is often considered to be the main verb (‘The shoot of Jesse will come …’93; ‘There shall appear the Root of Jesse …’94), it is quite possible and grammatically even more appropriate to construe e1stai as an auxiliary verb and the participle o9 a0nista/ menov as the predicative noun, And again Isaiah says, It will be the root of Jesse also (kai/) the one who rises up to rule Gentiles. In him Gentiles will hope.95 The locative preposition e0pi/, with dative case could be translated alternatively as ‘at’ or ‘upon’. But there seems to be a certain sense of purpose here: Gentiles put their hope in the Davidic Messiah risen from the dead, with the intent that he is and will be their ruler, too. Paul presupposes agreement with his Roman audience that Jesus Christ is the shoot of Jesse, the long-expected messianic ruler from the house of David, and the one who rises from the dead to rule the Gentiles or nations. Connected with the resurrection from the dead is Jesus Christ’s determination as the one who has received God’s power. So God has already designated the universal ruler. But he is still in heaven, where, according to Phil. 3.20-21, ‘our poli/teuma is’, ‘and it is from there that we are expecting a saviour (swth/r), the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body (su/ mmorfon tw|= sw/ mati th= v do/chv au0tou=) by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself (kata\ th\n e0ne/rgeian tou= du/nasqai au0to\n kai\ u9pota/ cai e0autw|= ta\ pa/nta)’. 4. Obedience which Consists in Faithfulness The gospel about the Lord Jesus Christ, with which Paul opens his letter to the Romans, is the good news that proclaims God’s son Jesus Christ’s accession to divine power and universal rulership. The adequate relation to this ‘apocalyptic’ process on the human side is characterized by forms of the word-stem pist-. Tightly knit with it are especially terms denoting obedience (and also recognition). Paul and his addressees have a mission among the Gentiles to achieve ‘obedience which consists in faith(fulness)’ (Rom. 1.5; 16.26: u9pakoh\ pi/stewv).96 What Christ has achieved through Paul’s evangelizing resulted in ‘obedience of Gentiles’ (Rom. 15.18: ei0v u9pakoh\n e0qnw= n). Paul thanks God for the Romans’ ‘faithfulness (pi/stiv)’, which ‘is proclaimed in all the world’ (Rom. 1.8). That is echoed in Rom. 16.19: 92. Fitzmyer, Romans, p. 707. 93. Jewett, Romans, p. 886. 94. Fitzmyer, Romans, p. 705 (but cf. his translation of Isa. 11.10 LXX on page 707!). 95. Note the absence of the article in contrast to 15.9a. 96. The syntagma u9pakoh\ pi/stewv is most probably not pointing to the obedience that requires or effects faith, but to that which is, or consists in, faith. But this issue is, as is well known, very much debated.

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‘Your obedience (u9pakoh/) is known to all.’ Some in Israel ‘have ignored God’s righteousness … and not submitted themselves to God’s righteousness’ (Rom. 10.3, ou0x u9peta/ghsan). They are not obedient to the gospel (Rom. 10.16, 17; cf. 15.31) or show ‘disbelief’ or ‘lack of faith(fulness)’ (a0pisti/a: Rom. 11.20, 23; cf. 3.2). Noticeable, however, is that Paul nowhere connects obedience to rulers with word-forms of the stem pist-. Of course the term ‘faith(fulness)’ originates from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible’s Nm). But there are good reasons to correlate Paul’s use of the word in Romans also to Latin fides – the keyword of Roman political, social and legal culture.97 As Christian Strecker,98 in particular, has pointed out in a recent article, the syntagma u9pakoh\ pi/stewv, the faithful obedience or the obedience which consists in faith(fulness), alludes most likely, as the intensive use of pi/stiv etc. indicates, to this key Roman concept. Pi/stiv or fides represents a Roman ‘identity marker’.99 Horace, for example, in his Carmen Saeculare, rejoices that Fides, Pax, Honor and Pudor (Faithfulness, Peace, Honour and Decency) have returned with Augustus and the golden age (Carmen Saeculare 57.58).100 And Silius Italicus even called the people of Rome sacrata gens clara fide (Punica 1.634).101 Fides covers a lot of semantic dimensions, not least trust in someone’s reliability or credibility, loyalty, expectation of fulfilment of promises or covenants. And although there is always a hierarchical difference, fides denotes a relationship of reciprocity. However, it is revealing that Paul applies the word-stem pi/st- only to relationships between humans and the God of Israel or Christ, and probably also between Jesus (Christ) and God (Rom. 3.26102). The reciprocity is at least once mentioned, that is, in Rom. 3.5, God’s pi/stiv. However, some interpreters read the phrase e0k pi/stewv ei0v pi/stin (Rom. 1.17) – although surely ‘a progression, transformation, or movement is intended’103 by the prepositions – not as pointing to one and the same ‘referent’, but to different ones. Stowers, for instance, translates ‘The righteousnes of God is revealed in it (the gospel) by means of (Jesus’) faithfulness resulting in faithfulness.’104 And Dunn – like Karl Barth – reads ‘from God’s faithfulness (to his covenant promises) to man’s response of faith’.105 Both readings are supported by the 97. Cf. K.-J. Hölkeskamp, SENATUS POPULUSQUE ROMANUS. Die politische Kultur der Republik – Dimensionen und Deutungen (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 2004), pp. 105–36. 98. Cf. Strecker, ‘Fides-Pistis-Glaube’, pp. 223–50. 99. Strecker, ‘Fides-Pistis-Glaube’, p. 231. 100. Cf. Gal. 3.23 (Pro\ tou= de\ e0lqei=n th\n pi/stin) and Gal. 3.25 (e0lqou/shv de\ th=v pi/stewv). 101. Strecker, ‘Fides-Pistis-Glaube’, p. 231. 102. Cf. for the intensive and extended discussion of the (subjective) genitive, Johnson Hodge, If Sons, pp. 82–84; P. Eisenbaum, Paul was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), pp. 189–95. 103. Jewett, Romans, p. 143. 104. S. K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews and Gentiles (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 202. 105. J. D. G. Dunn, Romans, Vol. 1 (Dallas: Word, 1988), p. 48.



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context, perhaps the latter one more explicitly (cf. 3.5). To this we could add phrases with the adjective pisto/ v related to God (cf. 1 Cor. 1.9; 10.13; 16.1 etc.), Abraham (Gal. 3.9) and Christ-followers (1 Cor. 4.17; 7.25; 2 Cor. 6.15). The paradigm of pi/stiv or the pisto/ v par excellence is Abraham, who ‘with respect to the promise of God, did not waver in disbelief, but grew strong in faith’ (Rom. 4.20). A (Roman) ruler, however, is not characterized as pisto/ v and he does not deserve fides either. According to Romans 13, he only deserves obedience, fear and honour. Strecker compares u9pakoh\ pi/stewv to the Roman concept of deditio in fidem, that is, Paul speaks – according to Strecker – of a messianic devotion, loyalty and submissiveness to the Lord Jesus Christ or to Jesus Christ as the Lord. Enemies of Rome are transformed by the deditio in fidem from enemies to subjects, to confederates (socii) and sometimes to friends (amici); that is, from outside to inside, from the external hostile area of the Roman Empire to the internal area, which is chararacterized by obedience to Rome, but also by shelter and protection through Rome. Given the interrelation of fides between the Roman victor and the conquered or subdued peoples, Rome spared at least the lives of the defeated enemies and the Caesar could show clementia, mercy or grace. Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos, to spare the conquered and beat down the cocky proud (Aen. 6.853), is the moral prophecy of Anchises, Aeneas’ father, for Rome. But even Aeneas himself killed Turnus, overwhelmed by wrath and anger, ira, under the influence of furor, although he should have shown mercy. Turnus himself, however, has shown rage and anger. Nevertheless, the transformation of hostile relations between Rome and those outside of its empire to fides-relations establishes in any case Rome as the dominating power and the conquered as the subjugated peoples. It is especially in Rom. 5.1-11 that Paul depicts the present status he and his audience in Rome have reached as peace and reconciliation in exchange for enmity on the basis of pi/stiv. Since God has made peace with his enemies – the sinners, the ungodly – by making them righteous, the reason for the enmity, sin, has been abolished. The agent of this peace-making or reconciliation with God is Jesus Christ. Through him (his expiating death) and by means of pi/stiv the former sinners have already gained access to God’s grace, xa/riv (clementia). And it is also through Christ, namely ‘his blood’ (i.e. Christ’s violent death), that ‘we’ shall be saved in the future from the wrath of God and will share the life of Christ, changed through pi/stiv from the outside of God’s realm, the realm of sin and its consequence in death, to the inside of it, the realm of grace/clementia and righteousness and its consequence in eternal life. The future, which is present as hope, is again characterized as do/ca tou= qeou= (5.2), that is, participation in the splendour of God, which implies the future status as children of God in the presence of his glory in heaven.

22

Reading Paul in Context 5. Coexistence and Transformation of Identities

William S. Campbell has emphasized in his profound work, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity, that in Pauline communities the notion of belonging to Christ, which associates and unifies the Christ-followers, coexists with their respective ‘historic identity’,106 not least in regard to their different ethnic origins. ‘Oneness is not sameness.’107 ‘Being in Christ can be likened to being one body or one universal family.’108 Thus there is not a static coexisting of multiple identities. Rather ‘the new creation presupposes the old and transforms it’109 at the same time. Hence, Campbell stresses, ‘The crucial aspect of Paul’s understanding of transformation is that it is an ongoing and as yet an incomplete process.’110 Subscribing to this pathbreaking interpretation, my reading of Romans in an (anti-) imperial or ‘apocalyptic’ context has tried to show that for Paul the insistence on obedience to the (Roman) rulers and the obedience of faith in Jesus Christ as Son of God in power and Lord, which implies the expectation of the coming of God’s kingdom, coexist as well – and that without contradiction. This coexistence is not static, but part of an ongoing process of transformation. ‘For now salvation is nearer to us than when we came to faith(fulness)’ (Rom. 13.11) and ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion’ (Rom. 11.26). This coexistence and transformation of ages, of an aeon that is drawing to its close and an aeon that is already dawning, encompasses an ‘anthropological’ side, too. Because the faithful Christ-followers’ ‘old self’ (o9 palaio\v h9mw= n a1 nqrwpov) and the ‘body of sin’ (sw= ma th=v a9marti/av) is made ineffective (Rom. 6.11), they are enabled to walk in the ‘newness of life’ (kai\ h9mei=v e0n kaino/thti zwh= v peripath/swmen) by growing together with Christ’s death and resurrection (Rom. 6.4-5). ‘Newness of life’ depends on their being made righteous on the basis of faith and the Spirit, they have received. In Romans 8 Paul defines this as ‘a spirit of adoption/sonship’ (8.15). It is this spirit which is the power of transformation. The risen Christ is the ‘prototype’, ‘the firstborn among many brothers/ siblings’ (8.29). I mentioned the ‘hybrid identity’ of Christ as Son of God and offspring of David’s house. I think the same is true for the Christfollowers – but the other way round.111 Their hybrid identity is on the one hand determined through the ‘prototype’ Adam (Rom. 5.12-25) and on the other hand through the ‘prototype’ Christ, the second or last Adam. Adam left on them the imprint of a fate determined by sin and death. But since they participate in Jesus Christ’s fate on the basis of faith(fulness), they have 106. Campbell, Paul, p. 170. 107. Campbell, Paul, p. 170. 108. Campbell, Paul, p. 165. 109. Campbell, Paul, p. 165. 110. Campbell, Paul, p. 171. 111. Cf. E. W. Stegemann, ‘Zur apokalyptischen Konstruktion einer kollektiven Identität bei Paulus’, in M. Oeming and W. Boës (eds), Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft und kirchliche Praxis. Festschrift Jürgen Kegler (Berlin: LIT-Verlag 2009), pp. 29–54.



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grown together with him, his death and resurrection (Rom. 6.5), that is, they are already in a process of transformation. In Rom. 8.29 Paul says that God had decided beforehand to transform those who love God and who are ‘called ones’ according to God’s plan (8.28), to the image of God’s son (kai\ prow/risen summon/rfouv th=v ei0ko/nov tou= ui9ou= au0tou=). Paul is obviously not speaking metaphorically. He is speaking of the destiny of the faithful followers of Christ as being shaped by the Holy Spirit dwelling in their hearts. They are transformed into the image of the Son of God. However, Christ is not their forefather, but the ‘firstborn’ of a new, and even in somatic respect, transformed humankind to sons/children of God.112 God himself is the father of those descendants (Rom. 1.7; 8.15). Virgil’s prophecy for Augustus, which he put in the mouth of Anchises, the father of Aeneas, promised Augustus Caesar, the descendant of the divine (divi genus), that he will extend his empire beyond the stars, and bring a golden age to the Latin land. He will eventually ascend with all the Julian offspring to the exalted firmament (omnis Iuli progenies magnum caeli ventura sub axem; Aen. 6.790-92). For Paul it is Jesus Christ and his followers who will ascend to their Father, God, and his kingdom in heaven, Jesus Christ as the firstborn of the resurrection of the dead and his brothers and sisters after him. But up to now they still coexist with this aeon and its frailties.

112. S. Lorenzen, Das paulinische Eikon-Konzept. Semantische Analysen zur Sapientia Salomonis, zu Philo und den Paulusbriefen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), p. 261.

Chapter 2

The Anthropological Implications of Revelation of Wrath in Romans

the

Robert Jewett Exactly how is divine wrath connected with the gospel in Romans? Various explanations have been offered by recent researchers. I want to show that none of these answers takes with full seriousness the centre of Paul’s gospel in the death and resurrection of Christ, and the new worldview that emerges therefrom. My thesis is that the unparalleled negativity of Paul’s anthropology, shaped by his understanding of the implications of the crucifixion of Christ, explains both his insistence on the current evidence of divine wrath and the ultimate triumph of divine grace. If this negative view can be demonstrated as a feature of the entire human race, it would sustain and augment William S. Campbell’s argument about the unity of Jews and Gentiles in the theology of Paul.1 1. Wrath as an Implication of the Gospel in Romans While most commentators understand the description of divine wrath in Rom. 1.18-25. within the traditional parameters of Jewish or GraecoRoman ideas of retribution for transgressions in the historical future or at the end of time,2 the fact that 1.18-25. provides the initial development of 1. See W. S. Campbell, ‘“All of God’s Beloved in Rome!” Jewish Roots and Christian Identity’, in S. E. McGinn (ed.), Celebrating Romans: Template for Pauline Theology – Essays in Honor of Robert Jewett (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 67–82; Paul’s Gospel in an Intercultural Context: Jew and Gentile in the Letter to the Romans (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 1991). 2. See R. V. G. Tasker, The Biblical Doctrine of the Wrath of God (London: Tyndale, 1951), a view updated in ‘Biblical Doctrine of the Wrath of God’, Themelios 26 (3) (2001), pp. 5–21; E. Synofzik, Die Gerichts- und Vergeltungsaussagen bei Paulus. Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), pp. 79–80. For attempts to move beyond this framework, see G. H. C. Macgregor, ‘The Concept of the Wrath of God in the New Testament’, NTS 7 (1960–61), pp. 101–09; C. F. D. Moule, ‘Punishment and Retribution: An Attempt to Delimit Their Scope in New Testament Thought’, SEÅ 30 (1966), pp. 21–36; C. R. Schoonhoven, The Wrath of



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Paul’s view of the gospel as stated in the thesis of 1.16-17 points toward a new understanding of wrath from the perspective of the gospel. In Steve Finamore’s formulation in the John Ashton Festschrift, divine wrath is ‘in some sense at least, a new or newly revealed phenomenon and this implies that it is in some way related to the gospel’.3 This approach allows the ga/r of 1.18 to be taken with full seriousness. As a ‘marker of cause or reason’,4 ga/r indicates that the discussion of wrath directly supports the thesis about the gospel in 1.16-17 rather than expressing its antithesis. In contrast to interpreters who understand wrath in 1.18 as an antithesis to justifying grace in 1.17,5 C. E. B. Cranfield and others follow a Barthian dialectic in perceiving ‘two sides of the same process’ by which the reality of wrath is understandable finally ‘on Golgatha’.6 Steve Finamore employs a Girardian theory as elaborated by Robert Hamerton-Kelly to explain wrath ‘as the process of human vengeance and violence of which Christ was the target and victim. In bearing that wrath, Jesus … represents it to us, enabling us to take responsibility for it and so have the possibility to change our way of being human’.7 Although insightful for modern readers, however, neither the Barthian nor the Girardian approach is sufficiently anchored in the ancient world to provide a fully plausible explanation of the link Paul had in mind. A more plausible approach is offered by Bruce Malina and John Pilch, who define wrath as referring to God’s being ‘prepared to get satisfaction for actions of public dishonor, that is, vengeance for being publicly dishonored – so as to maintain his honor’.8 In the codes that were characteristic for ancient Mediterranean societies, honour was understood as ‘a claim to worth and

Heaven (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1966); K. Haacker, The Theology of Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2003), p. 33. 3. S. Finamore, ‘The Gospel and the Wrath of God in Romans 1’, in C. Rowland and C. H. T. Fletcher-Louis (eds), Understanding, Studying and Reading: New Testament Essays in Honour of John Ashton (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), p. 140. 4. BDAG, p. 189. 5. For example, P. Stuhlmacher, Gerechichtkeit Gottes bei Paulus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), p. 80; H. Schlier, Der Römerbrief (Freiburg: Herder, 1977), p. 48; O. Kuss, Der Römerbrief übersetzt und erklärt (Regensburg: Pustet, 1957– 78), p. 33; R. Miggelbrink, Der Zorn Gottes. Geschichte und Aktualität einer ungeliebten biblischen Tradition (Freiburg: Herder, 2000), p. 314; B. Witherington III, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), p. 64. 6. C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975–79), 1.110. See also U. Wilckens, Der Brief an die Römer, EKKNT 6 (Zürich: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1978–82), 1.102. 7. Finamore, ‘The Gospel and the Wrath of God in Romans 1’, p. 149. The problem with this analysis is that wrath becomes a strictly human phenomenon related to scapegoating. Paul appears to believe, in contrast, that a humanity capable of killing the Christ deserves divine wrath in the fullest measure. 8. B. J. Malina and J. J. Pilch, Social-Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), p. 228.

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the social acknowledgement of that worth’.9 If a dishonoured party fails to respond to the challenge, ‘he loses his reputation in the eyes of the public … To allow one’s honor to be impugned … is to leave one’s honor in a state of desecration – vitiated, profaned, debased – and this would leave a person socially dishonored and dishonorable.’10 Thus, if God fails to avenge those who dishonour him, he fails to demonstrate that he is an honourable and worthy God. The expectation of divine wrath was thus a social and psychological certainty for the ancient world. There is a basis here to move beyond Malina and his colleagues to articulate the link between wrath and the cross of Christ in Pauline theology. Most recent interpreters have failed to follow up on these efforts to articulate a logical link between the gospel and divine wrath. For example, Klaus Wengst makes no reference to the link between wrath and Paul’s gospel, but concentrates on overcoming distinctions between Jews and Gentiles: all are under sin.11 Similarly, Thomas R. Schreiner argues that both Jews and Gentiles are under sin, but fails to develop the connection between 1.18–3.20 and Paul’s concept of the gospel.12 Michael Theobald describes Paul’s gospel without reference to the crucifixion of Christ and treats the concept of wrath strictly within the parameters of Jewish precedents.13 In his Theology of Paul, James D. G. Dunn explains Rom. 1.18-32 within the parameters of Jewish treatments of the fall of Adam,14 making Paul’s ‘indictment truly universal’,15 but not connecting it in any way to Paul’s gospel. Since ‘wrath’ is an expression of Paul’s gospel, described in 1.16 with the identical present passive verb, a0pokalu/ptetai, the present progressive translation ‘is being revealed’ is appropriate for both.16 The reference in 1.18 to the revelation of wrath a0po\ ou0ranou= is taken by Hans-Joachim Eckstein to be a reference to the parousia, which allows him to restrict Paul to the

9. B. J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (3rd edn, rev. and exp., Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2001), p. 31. 10. Malina, New Testament World, pp. 36, 39. 11. K. Wengst, ‘Freut euch, ihr Völker, mit Gottes Volk!’ Israel und die Völker als Thema des Paulus—Ein Gang durch den Römerbrief (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008), pp. 155–88. 12. T. R. Schreiner, Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998), p. 81. See also his Paul, Apostle of God’s Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001), pp. 105–07. 13. M. Theobald, Der Römerbrief (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000), pp. 119–23. 14. J. D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), pp. 91–93. 15. Ibid., p. 93. 16. While the present tense is often employed as a ‘present of anticipation’ of future events (H. W. Smyth, Greek Grammar, revised by G. M. Messing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), §1879), the reference to God’s revelation ‘in the present time’ in 1.17 requires that a present process be acknowledged in the verb of 1.18.



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traditional apocalyptic scenario.17 I suggest in contrast that Paul grounds his theory on the divinely authenticated witness ‘by the power of signs and wonders’ (15.19) to the death and resurrection of Christ. Following the premises laid down in the confession of 1.3-4, the resurrection ‘designated’ Jesus as the ‘Son of God’, thus revealing the ‘impiety and wickedness’ (1.18) of those who crucified him. In place of a Barthian dialectic about theological truth, I suggest a more widely understandable anthropological truth about human depravity. The essence of humankind’s unrighteous design is to ‘suppress the truth’, behaviour that was revealed in the crucifixion of Christ. Kate/xw in this context means to hold down, to take captive, and as the argument in v. 25 makes plain, to exchange position with God.18 What the gospel of Christ crucified reveals is the ongoing human effort to suppress the truth about their evil inclinations. Persons and regimes constantly try to cover up the truth about themselves and their self-serving quests for superior honour, as revealed paradigmatically in the crucifixion of the Righteous One. His ‘resurrection from the dead’ (v. 4), however, gives Paul confidence that divine truth is triumphant. The wrath of God sets limits that the human race incessantly tries to thwart, but Romans contends that the ‘wrath of God’ is currently being ‘revealed’ in the gospel message in such a way as to expose the ‘unrighteousness of humans’. The gospel therefore reveals wrath by indicating the culpability of the human race at so egregious a level as to make retribution morally necessary and inevitable. It is not so much ‘the settled and active opposition of God’s holy nature to everything that is evil’, to use Morris’ formulation,19 but an inference drawn from the death and resurrection of Christ. This message disclosed that the ‘senseless heart [of evildoers] was darkened’, which implies a comprehensive process of disabling and distortion that involves intellectual, emotional and 17. H.-J. Eckstein, ‘“Denn Gottes Zorn wird vom Himmel her offenbar werden.” Exegetische Erwägungen zu Röm 1:18’, ZNW 78 (1987), pp. 83–86, citing 1 Thess. 1.9-10 and 2 Thess. 1.7 along with Jewish apocalyptic texts. Similarly, C. J. Roetzel, Judgement in the Community: A Study of the Relationship between Eschatology and Ecclesiology in Paul (Leiden: Brill, 1972) pp. 81ff.; G. Herold, Zorn und Gerechtigkeit Gottes bei Paulus. Eine Untersuchung zu Röm 1.16-18, EHS 23.14 (Bern and Frankfurt: Lang, 1973) pp. 306ff.; and E. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans (trans. E. W. Bromiley; London: SCM, 1980) p. 38, opt for a futuristic, apocalyptic significance. Although the present tense can sometimes be employed for the future (Smyth, Grammar, §1879), the indications in this passage do not support this future interpretation. In addition to the present tense of the verb a0pokalu/ptetai in 1.18, there is an explicit reference to a present revelation of the gospel in 1.17. The heavenly revelation of which Romans speaks is that of the gospel, with a0pokalu/ptetai understood adverbially as defining ‘reveal’, as Eckstein, ‘Denn Gottes Zorn’, p. 79, rightly insists. These details render improbable that ‘heaven’ is merely a euphemism for God, indicating the divine origin of wrath as suggested by O. Michel, Der Brief an die Römer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), p. 97, and Cranfield, Romans, 1.111. 18. See esp. Wilckens, 1.105; J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1993), p. 278 suggests the translation ‘stifle the truth’. 19. L. Morris, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988), pp. 76–77.

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physical dimensions of the human being. This leads to idolatry that entails ‘worshipping the creature rather than the Creator’, as revealed in Christ. In the honour-and-shame context of the Graeco-Roman world, such worship would have been perceived as an outrageous assault on God. That God would be enraged at the insults against his son was simply assumed. ‘Slight and revenge in the ancient Mediterranean are part of a more general pattern of challenge-riposte’, as Malina and Rohrbaugh show. Here the challenge is some dishonoring behavior. The one slighted, whether an individual or the ingroup in which the individual is embedded, fends off the challenge by getting satisfaction for the dishonor … What makes such revenge socially necessary is that the one slighted must publicly demonstrate [concern for his own honor] … A person unconcerned about honor is shameless, an intolerable condition in the Mediterranean world. Hence slights must be avenged. 20

What was perceived as a social necessity for persons was assumed also for God. To grasp how this functioned for Paul, however, one must move further on the path set forth by Malina and his colleagues to see the centrality of the cross event as the revelation of this human situation. In 1.24, 26 and 28, Paul describes the process of wrath with the verb pare/dwken ei0v, which suggests the deliverance by a judge to some form of retribution.21 When pare/dwken is followed by a dative expression and then by an ei0v clause indicating the purpose, it is a technical expression for the police or courts in turning someone over to official custody for punishment.22 This semantic field supports the translation with a formal expression such as ‘he consigned’.23 The explicit mention of the subject o9 qeo/ v indicates a

20. B. J. Malina and R. L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (2nd edn, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), pp. 33–36. 21. The elaboration of this scheme by A. Schlatter, Romans: The Righteousness of God (trans. S. S. Schatzmann; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), p. 42, has been followed by E. Klostermann, ‘Die adäquate Vergeltung in Röm 1:22-31’, ZNW 32 (1933), pp. 3–6; J. Jeremias, ‘Zu Röm 1:22-32.’ ZNW 45 (1954), p. 120; K.-A. Bauer, Leiblichkeit, das Ende aller Werke Gottes. Die Bedeutung der Leiblichkeit des Menschen bei Paulus (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1971), p. 140; and many others. An example of the formula used here appears in Job 16.11 (LXX): pare/dwken ga/r me o9 ku/riov ei0v xei=rav a0di/kou (‘for the Lord delivered me into the hand of the wrongdoer’). 22. W. Popkes, Christus Traditus. Eine Untersuchung zum Begriff der Dahingabe im Neuen Testament (Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 1967), pp. 83–85, with numerous examples; that Paul otherwise uses this technical expression is evident in 1 Cor. 5.5, paradou= nai to/n toiou=ton tw|~ Satana|~ ei0v o1leqron th= v sarko/v (‘deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh’). BDAG, p. 614, lists as 1b ‘hand over, turn over, give up a person’ in an official proceeding. However, Danker selects the translation ‘he abandoned’ for Rom. 1.24, which seems to overstate the element of ridding oneself of responsibility; see Cranfield, Romans, 1.121. 23. See esp. W. Popkes, ‘Zum Aufbau und Charakter von Röm 1.18-32’, NTS 28 (1982), p. 496, and the comprehensive discussion of the term in idem, Christus Traditus, passim. Cranfield, Romans, 1.121, opts for ‘delivered up’ with a vaguely judicial connotation.



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decision on the part of God, moving beyond the vague passives in 1.21-22.24 Paul insists that God became25 directly26 involved in the process of moral retribution in the period before the enactment of the final wrath, whereby the distorting and darkening of the heart (v. 21) result in God’s confining the heart within the twisted circle of its desires (v. 24). Those who choose a dishonest heart are required to live out the life imposed by its twisted desires.27 Such wicked desires of the heart are the punitive custody into which God consigns sinners. In Paul’s view, this consignment was required because of the outrageous crucifixion of God’s son. Paul goes on to develop a thesis about the manifestation of divine wrath at the sexual behaviour typical of Paul’s time. Paul goes on in vv. 28-32 to describe the social chaos that is evidence of the current wrath of God. For example, the term u9bristh/v implies persons of insolence, pride, wantonness or violence,28 who are often related to the idea of qeostugh/v, in this instance, a person who hates God.29 The world is full of ‘murder’ and ‘strife’, such violence also indicating the presence of divine wrath. In this entire passage, wrath and violence are currently visible, but their agency is human. Although 24. Popkes, ‘Aufbau’, p. 496, as opposed to Dunn, Romans, 1.62. 25. The aorist form of pare/dwken was probably not chosen merely for rhetorical effect, as Bauer, Leiblichkeit, p. 141, understands Michel, Römer, p. 102, to be suggesting. However, Bauer does not seem any closer to the temporal sense when he says the aorist emphasizes that the divine consignment continues on into the present, which would seem to be descriptive of the perfect tense. Schlier, Römerbrief, p. 59, also understands pare/dwken in a perfect temporal sense. The aorist refers instead to a completed action in the past, which in this instance is visible in the perverse behaviour of sinners. 26. C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (London: Collins, 1959), p. 29, discounts the subject of this active verb when he argues that evil in this passage ‘is presented as a natural process of cause and effect, and not as the direct act of God … The act of God is no more than an abstention from interference with their free choice and its consequences.’ A. T. Hanson, The Wrath of the Lamb (London: SPCK, 1957), p. 85, concurs. H. A. W. Meyer, Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Epistle to the Romans (trans. J. C. Moore; Edinburgh: Clark, 1876), 1.86, and D. J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 111, have a more adequate sense of the ‘active role’ of God in this process of judgement. 27. See R. G. Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), p. 152: ‘The wrath works by self-inflicted harm. God gives sinners up to the consequences of their self-destructive actions … The wrath is the consequence of living willingly in the system of sacred violence.’ J. P. Heil, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Reader-Response Commentary (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), p. 25: ‘Vice is its own punishment’. 28. BDAG, p. 832; Cranfield, Romans, 1.131; see also N. R. E. Fisher, Hybris: A Study of the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1992), passim. 29. BDAG, p. 358 and LSJ, p. 792 note that classical Greek usage has a passive sense, ‘hated by a god’, while the active sense appears intended here. Arguing for the passive sense in Romans are Th. Zahn, Der Brief des Paulus an die Römer (Leipzig: Deichert, 1910), p. 103; M.-J. Lagrange, Saint Paul. Épître aux Romains (Paris: Gabalda, 1950), pp. 32–33; NEB; and Moffatt; but as Morris, Romans, p. 97, comments, hating God qualifies as a vice but being ‘hated by God does not’.

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God consigns humans to the violent consequences of their suppression of the truth, God does not intervene to enact wrath in a direct manner. Moreover, in contrast to the traditional view, wrath is definitely not postponed until an apocalyptic event at the end of time. The last judgement in this passage seems to be currently visible in societal disorder. 2. The Unprecedented Bleakness in Paul’s Anthropology The close proximity of wrath and Paul’s distinctive view of the gospel, visible both in 1.18 and 2.16, show that something about the gospel demanded an emphasis on wrath as currently visible. In the commentary, I began to relate this to the unprecedented negativity in the anthropology visible in 1.18–3.20. Nowhere else in the ancient world is there such an unreservedly negative view. I suggest that this derived from the cross event, where the hostility of the human race against God manifested itself in unprecedented clarity. In killing the Christ, the entire human race placed itself under wrath. Prior to this, the righteous could compare themselves favourably in comparison with sinners, as in the original contexts of the OT citations in the catena of chapter 3. But now, both Jews and Gentiles have shown themselves to be at war against God. From Golgotha to the present, wrath was perceived to hang over the human race for this assault on deity. For Paul, it was a present reality, which throws light on human behaviour everywhere, which amounts to worshipping the creature rather than the creator. This caused a breakdown of righteous relations and the violent, exploitative behaviour that corrupted the entire world, wherein divine wrath was legible. By the end of the letter to the Romans, it becomes clear that the hostility between congregations in Rome is evidence that this breakdown is still present and needs to be overcome. It is the gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected that reveals this awful situation and its remedy, with the resurrection confirming that the murdered one was really the divinely appointed Messiah, authenticating his message of divine grace to the very ones who opposed him. In 3.9, Paul has his Jewish interlocutor ask, ‘What then? Are we at a disadvantage?’30 Having admitted in 3.5 that he was involved in ‘wrongdoing’ and in v. 7 that he had been advocating a ‘falsehood’, and having heard the assessment in v. 8, ‘their condemnation is well deserved’, it is logical that the interlocutor should ask the question whether Jews actually stand at a disadvantage in comparison with Gentiles. In the honour-and-shame culture of the ancient world, somebody allegedly had to stand at the top. But this is precisely what the gospel repudiates. ‘Not at all’, replies Paul, for both Jews and Greeks are ‘under sin’ (3.9). Sin is here personified as an evil power that dominates the entire human race.31 This clearly goes beyond the traditional 30. For support of this translation of proexo/meqa, see Jewett, Romans, pp. 255–56. 31. See particularly P. Spitaler, Universale Sünde von Juden und Heiden? Eine Untersuchung zu Römer 1, 18–3, 20 (Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 2006), pp. 154–56.



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Jewish sense of sin as transgression of the law, and it moves beyond any other ancient source in placing all humans under this power. This sweeping declaration that ‘all’ are under this evil power means that they participate in various cultures of lies from which they do not seem able to escape without outside exposure and intervention. This advances the case that no group has an inherent superiority before God. Although this is often misunderstood in an individualistic manner, Paul is dealing here with groups whose tendency is to place their interests before the interests of others, and to view themselves as in some sense superior. All such groups are in fact inherently flawed. It is also significant that the Jewish interlocutor has now accepted the results of the previous diatribe in giving up the pose of superiority. In this case a dramatic change of opinion has taken place: despite his previous wiliness, the Jewish conversation partner that Paul creates is shown to be anything but incorrigible. This encourages both sides in the squabbling churches of Rome to view themselves and their competitors as susceptible to change in the light of the transforming power of the gospel. In 3.10-18, Paul presents a series of scriptural citations to prove that ‘a righteous human being does not exist’ (3.10). He subtly alters and edits these citations to eliminate the traditional distinction in the Old Testament and other Jewish literature between the wise, righteous person and the foolish, wicked one.32 For example, that ‘a righteous human does not exist’ is adapted from Ps. 13.1, where Paul deletes the reference to the ‘fool’, thus eliminating the traditional distinction between the wise, righteous person and the foolish, wicked one. In 3.13-14, Paul employs shocking references to unrighteous communication drawn from Psalms 5, 9, and 139, but the distinction in those psalms between the righteous and the wicked is dropped. The consequence of this deletion is that the entire human race, without exception, participates in sinful patterns of behaviour. The final contention that ‘a fear of God does not exist before their eyes’ (Rom. 3.18) is drawn from the LXX form of Ps. 35.2. Again in contrast to the psalm, where the distinction between the righteous (35.7-10) and the unrighteous (35.1-4, 11-12) is explicitly made, Paul’s formulation extends the condemnation to all people everywhere. At the end of the citations in chapter 3, Paul draws the conclusion that ‘all the world’ stands ‘under indictment’ of divine judgement (3.19). The passage closes with an altered citation of Ps. 143.2, ‘all flesh shall not be set right before him from works of the law’ (3.20). While the psalm referred to ‘all human beings’, Paul changed this to ‘all flesh’, just as he did in Gal. 2.16. Given the original setting of the saying in the circumcision crisis reflected in Galatians, I believe that Paul wished to counter the Judaizer’s claim that circumcised flesh was acceptable as righteous to God. This connotation is strongly suggested also for the Romans setting because of Paul’s prior use of the term ‘flesh’ in the context of circumcision (Rom. 2.28), so that ‘flesh’ evokes the tendency to claim superior status through religious performance 32.

See Jewett, Romans, pp. 259–60.

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and cultural precedence. A similar insight emerges from Paul’s reference to ‘works of the law’, which interpreters often restrict to the Torah but which actually refers to law in any culture. The lack of an article in the final reference to law at the end of verse 20 suggests that more than the Jewish law is in view here. In the honour system of every culture, conformity to some form of ‘works of law’ provides the basis of asserting superiority. However, in the face of the impartial righteousness of God, no human system of competing for glory and honour through conformity to law can stand. The knowledge that traditional systems of achieving honour and avoiding shame are sinful and must be abandoned is stated in the final clause of this pericope. Paul’s concluding word is that ‘acknowledgement of sin’ comes ‘through the law’ (3.20), which implies that the law itself conveys the truth for everyone: whether Jew or gentile, barbarian or Greek, educated or uneducated, ‘weak’ or ‘strong’, all are all touched by sin. Every boastful mouth must be closed in view of the righteousness of God revealed in the cross event. Nowhere else in the ancient world is there such an unreservedly negative anthropology. I suggest that this radicalization derives from Paul’s understanding of the cross of Christ. That religious and political establishments could justify killing the Messiah revealed a depth of depravity never before imagined. The resurrection of Christ reveals that the entire human race stands thereby under wrath. 3. The Tragic Failure of Religious Zeal in Romans 7 In Romans 7 we find another unprecedented analysis of human failure, this time of the most devoted of religious zealots who performs the law perfectly but ends up opposing God. I follow rhetorical studies by Stanley Stowers, Jean-Noël Aletti, and Jean-Baptiste Édart, which develop the concept of proswpopoei/a, a ‘Speech-in-Character’.33 This was a widely used method of argument in which a fictive character is given a voice to introduce important ideas. The key question is the identity of the ‘rhetorical I’ in this passage. The hypothesis developed in my commentary is that Paul depicts himself as the person prior to his conversion, a zealous fanatic who obeyed the Jewish law perfectly but with such eagerness to achieve honour that he produced evil results. In Gal. 1.13-14 Paul had described this competitive zeal: ‘For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it; and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.’ Here is someone whose religious motivation was

33. S. K. Stowers, ‘Romans 7.7-25 as a Speech-in-Character (proswpopoei/a)’, in T. Engberg-Pedersen (ed.), Paul in His Hellenistic Context (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), pp. 180–202; J.-N. Aletti, ‘Romans 7, 7-25: Rhetorical Criticism and Its Usefulness’, SEÅ 61 (1996), pp. 77–95; J.-B. Édart, ‘De la nécessité d’un sauveur: Rhétorique et théologie de Rm 7, 7-25’, RB 105 (1998), pp. 359–64.



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to be more righteous than anyone else, a perfectly understandable trait when one takes the obsession with gaining honour in the ancient Mediterranean world seriously. The resultant dilemma is described in Rom. 7.19: ‘For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.’ The ‘good’ that Paul as a persecutor of the early Christians sought to achieve was obedience to the Torah as a means of bringing in God’s kingdom. He wanted to follow God’s will, but discovered through the encounter with the resurrected Jesus that he had resisted the divinely appointed Messiah. What Paul describes in Romans 7 is not a failure to fulfil the law, including the command to fight against the godless, but rather the inability of such violent legalism to achieve the good. In Rom. 7.7-8 Paul explains the perversion of the law by sin by reference to covetousness. The classical psychological approach developed by Augustine concentrates on the seductive power of forbidden fruit to awaken ‘concupiscence’ that rebels against God. Augustine interpreted concupiscence as involuntary sexual desire. Francis Watson, Robert Gundry and Heikki Räisänen follow this line, but they overlook that Paul fails to cite the explicit prohibition of adultery in this discussion.34 It is questionable, moreover, whether any of these psychological theories are adequate to explain a text written prior to their emergence. Similarly problematic is the outmoded theory of Paul’s inability to perform the law, which still has its echoes in references to ‘sluggish moral conscience’.35 I prefer to keep the context of the Tenth Commandment in the forefront; it is not desire as such that is forbidden, but coveting what belongs to others. Paul refers here to a distortion in interpersonal relations such as described in 1.18–3.20. The sin of asserting oneself and one’s group at the expense of others fits the intensely competitive environment of Graeco-Roman and Jewish culture. Such sinful desire would include the Jewish alternative of desiring superior performance of the law, which was part of Paul’s own past, but it would also include distinctively Gentile forms of competition for honour. In verse 8, Paul says that sin worked within him to evoke ‘every manner of coveting’. In the case of Paul’s pre-conversion experience under review here, sin took the form of the competitive urge to ‘advance in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people’ (Gal. 1.14). This context correlates closely with the particular commandment in view here, namely, the prohibition of coveting as cited in the previous verse. In the competitive environment of the Graeco-Roman and Jewish worlds, the desire to surpass others and to

34. F. Watson, Agape, Eros, Gender: Towards a Pauline Sexual Ethic (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 154; R. H. Gundry, ‘The Moral Frustration of Paul before His Conversion: Sexual Lust in Romans 7:7-25’, in D. A. Hagner and M. J. Harris (eds), Pauline Studies: Essays Presented to Professor F. F. Bruce on His 70th Birthday (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), pp. 228–45; H. Räisänen, ‘The Use of e0piqumi/a and e0piqumei=n, in Paul’, in Jesus, Paul and Torah: Collected Essays (trans. D. E. Orton, Sheffield: JSOT, 1992), pp. 96–104. 35. Fitzmyer, Romans, p. 466.

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achieve honour had invaded the arena of religion, perverting it into a means of achieving superiority. This situation is presented as paradigmatic, because the Roman house and tenement churches are behaving in a similar manner toward one another, and if given the opportunity, will certainly extend this competitive zeal into the mission to Spain, where it would have equally fatal consequences. In Rom. 7.9-12 Paul describes sin’s deception in terms of his own experience with the law. He refers explicitly to this experience of his earlier life in Gal. 1.14-15, that ‘I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the tradition of my fathers’. It was this competitive subversion of the commandment, emerging at the very moment when Paul took up the burden of the Torah, that produced his destructive zealotism, which led to the persecution of the early church and to the dilemma analysed in the rest of this chapter. This competition was deceiving, because he was led to believe that superior performance of the law would earn honour both from fellow humans and from God and that such obedience would ultimately usher in God’s kingdom. His zealous adherence to this illusion was broken only by his conversion. The deadly consequences of this zealous obedience of the law could not have been understood from the Genesis account. This explains the personal formulation: the commandment ‘deceived me’ and ‘sin killed me’. It is Paul’s own experience, drastically shaped by his encounter with the risen Lord, that is herein presented as the paradigmatic ‘character’ for the congregations in Rome, not the experience of Adam. It is not the sin of disobedience, as in the Genesis account, but the sin of legalistic obedience that leads to the death Paul has in mind. In 7.20 Paul identifies the underlying cause of this dilemma: ‘Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.’ In verse 7 he had explained that ‘if it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin. I should not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet”.’ Rudolf Bultmann, Günther Bornkamm and Victor Funish defined ‘desire’ as ‘nomistic desire’, as evident in connection with the term ‘flesh’ in Gal. 5.16-17 and Rom. 6.12; 13.14, which is associated with the fulfilment of the law in Gal. 3.3 and Phil. 3.37.36 That was a step in the right direction. But since ‘nomistic desire’ involves a problematic understanding of subjectivity and individualism in Paul’s thought, while containing an element of anti-Jewish prejudice that Paul did not share, I prefer to retain the context of the Ten Commandments, which Paul cites here. It is not ‘desire’ as such that is forbidden but desiring what belongs to another: ‘You shall not covet your neighbour’s house … your

36. R. Bultmann, The Old and New Man in the Letters of Paul (trans. K. R. Crim; Richmond: John Knox, 1967), pp. 33–48; R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (trans. K. Grobel; New York: Scribner, 1955), 1.247–48; G. Bornkamm, ‘Sin, Law and Death (Romans 7)’, in Early Christian Experience (trans. P. L. Hammer; Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1969), pp. 87–104; V. P. Furnish, Theology and Ethics in Paul (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1968), pp. 141–43.



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neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour’ (Exod. 20.17). The sin that Paul has in mind in his explanation is to desire for oneself what rightfully belongs to someone else, which fits the intensely competitive environment of the Graeco-Roman and Jewish cultures in which each is led to gain more honour than others, which places them in the position of dishonoured losers. This matches Paul’s admission in Gal. 1.14: ‘I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.’ Competition for honour had promised him social prestige and divine approbation. What it actually produced was violent opposition against God. In Rom. 7.21-25, Paul describes his former captivity to this zealous behaviour, his bondage to the ‘law of sin’. While Paul intended to achieve the good in persecuting the early Christians, he found that the behaviour that appeared so natural and good was actually bad. Again, the contradiction between wanting and actually achieving the good is in view; not the capacity to obey the law, but the surprising consequence that such obedience led Paul into conflict with God’s Messiah. When he states that he shared ‘pleasure in the law of God’ (7.22), he is referring to pleasure shared with fellow Pharisees in the performance of the law. This fits the context of social zealotism. The joy shared by the obedient conformed to a biblical paradigm: ‘the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart’ (Ps. 19.8). The contrast in this verse between the inner and the outer man fits the context of Paul as the zealot whose deeds achieved the opposite of his original intent to serve ‘the law of God’. The rhetorical question about who can deliver such a person from death therefore relates to the pre-conversion Saul, caught in an awful contradiction between the good he sought to advance and the evil and death that he actually achieved. In 7.25, Paul gives thanks that the grace of Christ reveals and overcomes the destructive zealotism that had marked Paul’s former life and that was re-emerging in the conflicts between the weak and the strong in Rome. By using himself as the paradigmatic example of such misunderstanding, Paul sought to clarify a profound dilemma at the heart of religion: that the height of religious zeal led to the depth of opposition against God. This is a further radicalization of Pauline anthropology, involving those who perfectly fulfil the religious law but nevertheless find themselves at war against God. 4. Paul’s Hope of the Triumph of Grace over Wrath Despite the dramatic enlargement of its scope, wrath is not the final word in Romans. Even though Paul expects further enactments of wrath to take place in the very near future,37 the ultimate purpose of God is that all 37.

See Rom. 2.5, 8; 5.9.

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people will be saved.38 In 5.18, there is an exact parallelism between Adam’s damnation that came ‘to all people’ and Christ’s redemption that comes ‘to all people’. As John Colenso showed, the ‘all’ in this verse ‘must be the whole race, the whole family of man’, including alleged barbarians as well as those viewing themselves as civilized.39 Jan Bonda has lifted up the universalistic implications of Paul’s wording ‘that the salvation God has realized in Christ encompasses all humanity from the beginning’.40 This verse strongly suggests that Adamic damnation has been overturned by Christ’s righteous act and that the scope of righteousness in Christ includes all believers without exception, both now and at the parousia. The same inclusiveness is visible in Paul’s discussion of non-believing Jews created by God as ‘vessels of wrath’ (Rom. 9.22). That God ‘endures with great patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruc­tion’ implies that God delays the enactment of wrath so that the scope of repentance and mercy is widened as far as possible.41 As the subsequent argument will demonstrate, however, God will in fact not reject the Jewish people (11.1-2), who stand in the position of the ‘vessels of wrath’ at the present time.42 In the end, ‘all Israel will be saved’, according to 11.26. Within the context of the argument as a whole, even this reference to ‘vessels of wrath’ is modified by the prospect of the ultimate triumph of mercy.43 In 11.32, Paul concludes his argument in the third proof with the dictum, ‘For God confined all persons in disobedience, in order that he might show mercy to all.’ In the Roman context, mercy was reserved for the worthy among captives and vanquished enemies. Nowhere in the ancient world, outside of this text, was mercy granted in so indiscriminate and impartial a manner to ‘all’. The reduplication of pa= v in this verse is a climactic 38. See J. Bonda, The One Purpose of God: An Answer to the Doctrine of Eternal Punishment (trans. R. Bruinsma; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 79: ‘In Romans Paul does indeed speak of condemnation but he indicates in no way that this is God’s final purpose for the condemned! On the contrary, all the remaining chapters of the letter focus on the salvation of condemned humanity (Rom. 5:18).’ Italics in original. See also pp. 257–61. 39. J. W. Colenso, Commentary on Romans, reprint of the 1861 edition, edited, with an introduction by J. A. Draper (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2003), p. 114, cited by J. A. Draper, ‘A “Frontier” Reading of Romans: The Case of Bishop John William Colenso (1814–1883)’, in K.-K. Yeo (ed.), Navigating Romans Through Cultures: Challenging Readings by Charting a New Course (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), p. 73. 40. Bonda, One Purpose, p. 97. 41. Dunn, Romans, 2.559. 42. See Dunn, Romans, 2.559: ‘Paul’s treatment would also provoke a more devastating “double take” when his readers came to realize that Paul saw the bulk of Israel as the “vessels of wrath” …’ 43. Ch. Maurer, ‘skeu=o v’, TDNT 7 (1971), p. 364: ‘The point of this is that the people should turn from its wickedness and be made into a new pot. This means that according to the divine if not the human order there is the possibility that the present skeu=o v o0rgh=v may be received again into the superabundant divine mercy.’ See also J. M. Bassler, Divine Impartiality: Paul and a Theological Axiom (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982), pp. 160–61.



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expression of one of the most important themes of the letter, salvation for all found in 1.5, 7, 8, 16, 18; 2.9-10; 3.9, 12, 19, 20, 22, 23; 4.11, 16; 5.12, 18; 6.3; 8.14; 9.5, 6, 7, 17; 10.11-13, 18, 26. This has been seen with particular clarity by Franz Mussner and Marianne Meyer Thompson.44 As Dunn observes, this extraordinary epigram manages in only 12 words to sum up what he takes to be ‘the principal themes of the whole letter’,45 climaxing in the ‘final reconciliation of the whole world to God through the triumph of mercy’.46 The expectation of universal salvation in this verse is indisputable, regardless of the logical problems it poses for systematic theologians. In 14.8-9 Paul extends the reach of the crucified and resurrected Christ beyond the boundaries of life itself: ‘So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For it was to this end that Christ died and lived in order that he might be Lord over both the dead and the living.’ The kai\ … kai/ construction of 9b clearly implies that both the dead and the living are encompassed by the lordship of Christ. The sequence lends emphasis to the limitless reach of Christ’s lordship, indicating, in Heinrich Schlier’s words, ‘the breadth and depth of his rule. This Lord, in whom we live and die, admits no boundaries as the one who died and now lives forever.’47 The logical conclusion from Paul’s wording was drawn by Jan Bonda: ‘That the dead fall under Christ’s lordship means that he can reach them’,48 so that salvation will ultimately become universal. At the end of the final proof in Romans there is a catena of citations expressing hope of global reconciliation. The most important citation for our purpose is 15.11: ‘And again, “Praise the Lord, all the Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him.”’ This is a citation of Ps. 117.1 (LXX 116.1), which includes parallel references to ‘all the Gentiles’ and ‘all the nations’. The form Paul uses matches the need of his citation chain, which refers to the Gentiles in the third person because the missionary goal of reaching beyond the already converted Gentiles in Rome to the yet unconverted Gentiles in Spain is in view. Their voices will be added to the voices of other Gentile and Jewish believers in the eschatological chorus, as the wording of 15.11b makes plain. As Cranfield observes: ‘With its repeated use of pa= v, it stresses the fact that no people is to be excluded from this common praise of God.’49 In the context of Paul’s argument, the phrase pa/ ntev oi9 laoi/ (‘all the peoples’) 44. F. Mussner, ‘Heil für alle. Der Grundgedanke des Römerbriefs’, Kairos 23 (1981), pp. 213–14; M. Meyer Thompson, ‘“Mercy upon All”: God as Father in the Epistle to the Romans’, in S. K. Soderlund and N. T. Wright (eds), Romans the People of God: Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Fee on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 215–16. 45. Dunn, Romans, 2.696. 46. Ibid., p. 697. 47. Schlier, Römerbrief, p. 410; see also D. M. Stanley, Christ’s Resurrection in Pauline Soteriology (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1961), p. 199. 48. Bonda, One Purpose, p. 108; he goes on in p. 110 to insist that ‘God wants all people to be saved, and that remains his desire even after their death. We therefore know that he cannot possibly desire their eternal destruction.’ 49. Cranfield, Romans, 2.746.

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includes the Jews among the other peoples of the world, as Kühl, Zahn, and Dabelstein have shown.50 That this praise of God crosses ethnic barriers was prepared by 15.5-6, which exhorts the predominately Jewish ‘weak’ and the predominantly Gentile ‘strong’ in Rome ‘with one mouth’ to ‘glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’. This final reduplication of pa= v in 15.11 reiterates the theme of universal salvation evident throughout Romans. As in the magnificent antithesis of 11.32, ‘God confined all persons in disobedience, in order that he might show mercy to all.’ Conclusion A case has now been made that the radicalization of both wrath and salvation was understood by Paul as an implication of the gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected. It would have been self-evident to ancients that violent opposition to God was the most heinous of offences and that forgiveness of such an egregious crime could only be a matter of unearned grace. The latter was explicitly laid out in 3.24, 4.5, 5.15-20, 6.23 and 11.29. The terminology of these ancient assumptions about crimes against God, divine wrath, and divine grace is visible throughout the Roman letter. Paul’s insights about both grace and wrath were qualified by the eschatological urgency he shared with other first-generation believers. Paul believed that the entire human race stood under divine wrath because of its involvement in the crucifixion of Christ, whose appearance marked the beginning of a new era. Up until his final letter, it is also clear that Paul expected the return of Christ in the near future, enabling the entire world to be convicted and converted. Even those who died before this parousia would be transformed by grace, according to 14.8-9. Commentators have frequently been engaged in paring back the radicality of Pauline theology, because his hope in the proximity of the parousia was not fulfilled. The entire world was not converted in Paul’s lifetime. Innumerable efforts have been made to explain away or at least to limit the scope of the radical pa~v that Paul applied both to wrath and grace in Romans. I believe that these efforts are intellectually dishonest and inherently self-serving. Regardless of whether his expectations were fulfilled or not, what Paul wrote about wrath and grace is clear enough. Our deeper problem is what Paul demonstrated to the Roman believers who were damning each other in selfserving ways: that we humans would all prefer that wrath be restricted to our adversaries and grace be offered only to ourselves. If we could recognize this toxic reality for ourselves, our institutions, and our nations, productive paths to reinterpret his theology for the current global situation would surely open. 50. E. Kühl, Der Brief des Paulus an die Römer (Leipzig: Quell & Meyer, 1913), p. 464; Zahn, Römer, p. 595; R. Dabelstein, Die Beurteilung der ‘Heiden’ bei Paulus (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 1981), p. 193.

Chapter 3

Paul’s Political Christology: Samples

from

Romans

Neil Elliott New Testament scholar Daniel Marguerat has described contemporary scholarship on Paul as resembling ‘a city devastated by an earthquake’. In the wake of this metaphorical earthquake, ‘people scurry about in every direction, some assessing the damage, others verifying what still stands. Everyone takes the measure of the changes to come, but no one dares to build again, out of fear of a new shock.’1 The earthquake, of course, came in the late 1970s;2 and although (to extend the metaphor) there are still some who insist on squatting in the ruins of earlier theological interpretations, many of us now recognize their unsuitability, both historically and morally, and are in search of better structures. Even if one sees the dismantling of some previous interpretive architecture as valuable progress, one can nevertheless sympathize with younger scholars beginning serious study of Paul today, who may be tempted to despair in the face of so bewildering a landscape of competing interpretations. No one could blame newcomers for feeling a tinge of envy of older scholars who began their work in an earlier and ostensibly simpler time. But such apparent simplicity came at a cost. William S. Campbell has written about his own start in Paul scholarship at a time when ‘the literature on Romans was very different from that presently available’ and expressed relatively few interpretive options.3 In the early 1970s, Romans – or at least chapters 1 through 8 – was generally regarded as the fountainhead of Paul’s theology and thus subjected to meticulous exegetical scrutiny in the service of dogmatic 1. D. Marguerat, ‘Introduction’, in A. Dettwiler, J.-D. Kaestli and D. Marguerat (eds), Paul, une théologie en construction (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2004), p. 9; my translation. 2. R. Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of AntiSemitism (New York: Seabury, 1974); K. Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1976); E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1977); idem, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1983). 3. W. S. Campbell, Paul’s Gospel in an Intercultural Context (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 1991), p. iii.

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and pastoral ends. That theological agenda often proved remarkably resistant to inquiry into the historical circumstances that occasioned the text and, by implication, that might have shaped Paul’s theology itself. Campbell lists a few predecessors – especially Johannes Munck – whose work, though sometimes relegated to the margins of ‘theological’ inquiry, nevertheless blazed an important trail for his own scholarship.4 Campbell’s pioneering essays were just as important for me as I began my own early work in the early 1980s. It is in no small part to Campbell’s unflagging efforts that we owe the widespread present recognition that Romans is a situational letter. More precisely, he has helped us to see that the rhetoric of the letter, once read without the blinders of dogmatic presuppositions, points clearly to a situation in the Roman assemblies; that the ‘Gentile-Christian’ majority in those assemblies were the primary target addressed in the letter;5 and that it was anti-Jewish error among them – rather than any imagined fault inhering within Judaism or Jewish Christians as such – that prompted this letter as an admonitory corrective.6 I presume those positions in what follows. 1. A Political Reading of Romans: Contours and Challenges In recent years, inquiry into the social and cultural dynamics at work in the Roman church and its environment has expanded to include the political and ideological currents of the Roman Empire as well. Here again, Campbell was a pioneer as one of the first to recognize the importance of these currents for the interpretation of Romans.7 I have come to diverge from his understanding of the situation that provoked Romans at one point. I am not convinced that the anti-Judaism against which Paul struggled was, at root, a theological error (Campbell has variously described it using Christian theological terms, as a misunderstanding of ‘Heilsgeschichte’ or ‘antinomianism’ or ‘incipient Marcionism’).8 I have proposed instead that the context of ideological claims made by the emperor and court propagandists, specifically regarding the inevitable supremacy of Rome and the destiny of the Roman people to rule 4. Campbell, Paul’s Gospel, pp. 1–13, citing J. Munck, Paul and the Salvation of Mankind (ET London: SCM, 1959). Munck had the temerity to attack head-on the schematic constructions of F. C. Baur and the Tübingen school, which remain dominant in much Paul scholarship: see S. J. Hafemann, ‘Paul and His Interpreters’, in G. F. Hawthorne, R. P Martin and D. G. Reid (eds), Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), pp. 666–89. 5. I discuss my reservations regarding the term ‘Gentile’ elsewhere and prefer ‘non-Jewish’ or, in the plural, ‘nations’: see N. Elliott, The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), pp. 44–50. 6. W. S. Campbell, ‘The Rule of Faith in Romans 12:1–15:3’, in D. M. Hay and E. E. Johnson (eds), Romans (Pauline Theology Vol. 3, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), pp. 259–86. 7. Campbell, ‘Rule of Faith’, pp. 268–70. 8. Campbell, Paul’s Gospel, pp. 21; 33–35.



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inferiors, would have been sufficient to provoke the ‘error’ among Paul’s non-Jewish hearers in Rome. That is, they had come to boast over Israel, not first because as Christians they misperceived some theological ‘event’ involving Israel (such as a presumed ‘failure’ of the Christian mission to the Jews), but because, simply as non-Judaeans living in Rome, they had been seduced by imperial explanations for the apparent downfall of the Judaean people as ‘the conquered’ (Seneca), a ‘people born to servitude’ (Cicero).9 (It bears mention that this was the original burden of Wolfgang Wiefel’s oftquoted 1970 essay.)10 On this reading, although Paul’s protest in Romans is of course saturated with theology, its goal could fairly be described as political. By this I do not mean, of course, that Paul imagined himself the agent of a great revolutionary movement that would bring down the Roman Empire: we have no evidence of any such revolutionary figures in the early Principate. To be sure, there were what we might (but for the opprobrium the term gained at the end of the twentieth century) call ‘freedom-fighters’ – in Judaea and in Britain – who fought against the consolidation of Roman control of their nations, but there is little evidence that members of these causes ever imagined bringing the empire as such to an end. I use the term ‘political’ to mean, first, that in Romans Paul seeks to defend one people – his own, Israel – against the very public and political aspersions cast upon them by imperial Rome, aspersions that had apparently taken root in the Christ assemblies as well; and second, that Paul necessarily couches this defence in an exhortation that evokes, by way of implicit parody, the empire’s sweeping claims on the obedience of its subjects. It is not accidental that the frame of this letter, with its talk of Paul being commissioned to bring about the ‘faithful obedience of the nations’ (u9pakoh\n pi/stewv e0n pa= sin toi=v e q! nesin, Rom. 1.5; similarly 15.15-19), echoes the claims Augustus made in the Res Gestae and those that Virgil made for him in the Aeneid.11 Further, the horizon against which Paul works is very clearly the vision of an imminent ‘regime change’, though one accomplished through heavenly initiative, not human insurgency: he serves the Messiah, the one long prophesied to ‘rise to rule the nations’ (Rom. 15.12, quoting Isa. 11.10). In this eschatological vision there is apparently no room for a continuing empire (so 1 Cor. 15.24-28). (To be sure, what Paul says in Rom. 13.1-7 seems to speak of the positive role that the existing political authorities play, apparently indefinitely, in God’s present disposal of the world; but I side with those who read these statements as anomalous and requiring explanation – not as the definitive statement of ‘Paul’s theology of the state’.) 9. Against a ‘Christianizing’ interpretation of events behind the letter, see Elliott, Arrogance of Nations, chapter 3. 10. ET: W. Wiefel, ‘The Jewish Community in Ancient Rome and the Origins of Roman Christianity’, in K. P. Donfried (ed.), The Romans Debate (rev. and exp. edn; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), pp. 85–101. 11. Elliott, Arrogance of Nations, ch. 1: ‘Imperium: Empire and the “Obedience of Faith”’.

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Political readings of Paul’s letters, especially against the backdrop of Roman (and contemporary) imperial ideology, has become something of a cottage industry today.12 Political readings have been criticized, however, for overemphasizing what critics take to be merely incidental echoes in Paul’s language of themes from imperial propaganda and thereby displacing the core theological themes that motivate his apostolate and his letters. To take perhaps one of the most sympathetic critics as an example, N. T. Wright has characterized these readings as rather too indulgent of current political fashion. ‘To say that Paul opposed imperialism is about as politically dangerous as suggesting that he was in favor of sunlight, fresh air, and orange juice’, he declared early in the work of the Paul and Politics Section of the SBL. He admonished political interpreters to keep their focus on the theological core of Paul’s critique, not of imperialism but of idolatry: ‘Paul … was not opposed to Caesar’s empire primarily because it was an empire … but because it was Caesar’s, and because Caesar was claiming divine status and honors which belonged only to the one God.’ The question thus posed (if one may say that Bishop Wright has posed a question by declaring the answer to it) is actually more difficult to adjudicate than this statement implies. How might we go about testing, as an exercise of the imagination, whether Paul would more serenely have accepted a different empire, equally totalizing in its claims on allegiance but not making those claims in the names of the gods, that is, in terms we are now accustomed to calling ‘religious’? To put the question the other way round, when Wright insists that Paul’s ‘political sensibilities were driven by his theological ones, not vice versa’, how should we distinguish these categories? By whether or not Paul refers to a divine being? Then what should we make of the apostle’s claim to bring about the ‘faithful obedience of the nations’ to the one who ‘rises to rule the nations’: is that an expression of a theological or a political sensibility? Does not the question in fact tell us more about the categorical distinctions we are accustomed to make today, in secular democratic societies, than about Paul and his day? Wright is one of the gentler critics. At the 2008 Annual Meeting of the SBL, he stood as an advocate of the ‘counter-imperial’ interpretation of Paul in a counterpoint with John M. G. Barclay, who by positioning Wright as 12. Among ‘the usual suspects’ it is customary to include D. Georgi, Theocracy in Paul’s Praxis and Theology (trans. D. A. Green; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991); R. A. Horsley (ed.), Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International, 1997); idem (ed.), Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpretation (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International, 2000); idem (ed.), Paul and the Roman Imperial Order, Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International, 2004); my own work in Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress edition, 2006) and Arrogance of Nations; and a number of volumes in the Paul in Critical Contexts series, especially relevant in this regard being D. C. Lopez, Apostle to the Conquered: Re-Imagining Paul’s Mission (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008) and B. Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009).



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the only ‘balanced’ representative of the ‘Paul vs. empire coalition’ implicitly dismissed more thoroughgoing political interpretations as illegitimate. My own admittedly impressionistic sense of the field at present is that critiques of the ‘anti-imperial’ portrayal of Paul are not so much concerned to correct the picture of Paul’s politics (by presenting him as ‘pro-empire’, for example) as to rein in the interest in Paul’s politics and redirect interpretation to where it rightly belongs, on Paul’s theology. (Whether that effort has an implicit political dimension is of course a question worthy of pursuit.) Romans, on this view, is about God’s offer of salvation through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Seeking to speak instead about the ‘justice of God’ is therefore both a tendentious translation of h9 dikaiosu/nh tou= qeou= and an unwarranted change of subject.13 2. Probes of the Political in Romans My broad purpose here is to test whether the neat division of ‘political’ and ‘theological’ concerns in Paul’s day is tenable. Though I have done so in other essays, I will not approach that question here by asking whether one or another theme in Paul’s letters can be heard or read with political resonance. I and others have made that case often enough, but to date without convincing some theological critics, for whom such arguments are mere playing with ‘buzzwords’.14 (To the contrary, in recent work I have proposed specific criteria, not only for recognizing aspects of ‘intertextuality’ beyond the limits of biblical and Jewish traditions to which Christian interpretation has usually confined itself, but also for plotting Paul’s discourse, by means of a sort of triangulation, in a broader field of political discourses more or less constrained by contemporary power relationships in his immediate environment. I contend that dismissals of political interpretations would carry more weight if these methodological considerations were evaluated, not simply ignored.15) My narrower purpose here is to review several passages in Romans that are clearly christological. Indeed, these texts are often cited by critics to show that Romans is ‘really’ about salvation in Christ, not the ideological claims of the Roman Empire. Though exhaustive treatment of each passage 13. One recent example is B. Witherington’s generally appreciative review of my Arrogance of Nations in the RBL (online: http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/6481_7367. pdf). Witherington expresses his ‘exasperation’ at my drawing on the methods of Marxist ideological criticism, criticizes political interpretation for being ‘reductionistic’ of what is really the ‘religious and theological character of the language of the Bible’, and insists that my use of the translation ‘justice of God’ is wrong because it does not offer a theologically accurate description of God’s ‘salvation’. I submit that the chief point of contention is whether any approach to Paul’s letters other than the theological-ecclesiastical focus on ‘salvation’ is appropriate. 14. Witherington, op. cit. 15. Elliott, Arrogance of Nations, pp. 16–23 and passim.

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is not possible in this space, I believe my arguments are sufficient to show that Paul’s concern, precisely when he is describing Christ’s work in Romans, is still broadly ‘political’, in the dual sense used above. That is, first, Paul’s christological statements are part of the larger rhetorical purpose of the letter, which previous work has convinced me is the defence of Israel’s cause against prejudicial characterizations of Israel’s demise, shared by some nonJews in the Roman assemblies. Second, these characterizations are grounded in imperial representations of the Jews, not in any evident theological ‘lapse’ on the part of the Jews themselves. Recent efforts to read Romans in the context of Roman cultural and imperial values have not always addressed the rhetorical purpose or effect of Paul’s christological statements, or have derived very different messages from these statements. For example, in his larger work, The Apostle of God, John L. White has drawn convincing parallels between aspects of Paul’s Christology and ‘the Augustan imperial ideal’. Paul’s understanding of ‘God’s empire’ was conceived, White argues, ‘in response to the physical boundaries of the Roman Empire’. Further, ‘Paul’s idea of Christ was informed in some respects by the image of the emperor as ruler’ in that through Christ ‘God establishes universal justice (order), peace, and liberation’; his representation of Christ ‘as priestly Lord, family head, and political Lord reflects emphases found in imperial-cult ideology’.16 But White is content to draw comparisons and conclusions regarding the origins of some of Paul’s ideas without discussing the rhetorical effect of Paul’s use of these ideas in the service of Jewish messianism. Robert Jewett offers a far more thorough and nuanced discussion of the letter’s rhetoric in his magisterial commentary. Jewett repeatedly analyses Paul’s christological statements as the skilful blending of Jewish-Christian and Hellenistic-Christian traditions, in such a way as to reassure both components of the Roman assemblies that they are included in his gospel – but also to warn each camp that neither has an advantage before God. Soteriological aspects of the traditions Paul uses are less important to his purpose, Jewett argues, than the overriding concern to establish God’s impartiality over against the competition for honour that was the very engine of Roman imperial culture.17 ‘The stress on impartiality has a crucial bearing on the purpose of Romans’, Jewett argues,18 and it is this theme, rather than the soteriological function of Christ’s action, that he puts at the centre of his commentary. Though this attention to the cultural values of honour and shame marks an important advance, I note that Jewett continues to read Paul’s christological statements – as has the Protestant tradition before him – primarily as an interaction with intra-Christian debates. 16. J. L. White, The Apostle of God: Paul and the Promise of Abraham (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), ch. 5: pp. 130; 135; 204. 17. R. Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (assisted by R. D. Kotansky and E. J. Epp; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008); on Rom. 1.1-4, pp. 97–111; on Rom. 3.21-26, pp. 269–93. 18. Jewett, Romans, p. 279 and passim.



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Perhaps no scholar has pressed so far to contextualize Romans within the values of Augustan culture as Stanley K. Stowers. In Rereading Romans, Stowers elaborates the pervasive and premiere importance, at least among aspiring elites in the Roman Empire, of the value of self-mastery or selfcontrol (enkrateia).19 Jews responded to the ascendancy of this value in Augustan culture by presenting themselves, as observers and teachers of Torah, ‘as a uniquely self-mastered people; a people with just the sort of virtues valorized in the Augustan ideology’.20 Stowers sets Romans in the context of competition for ‘moral and religious power’ among these elites. Advocates of the ethic of self-mastery appealed to ‘the ambitions either of the ruling classes to subject inferiors to strict control or of inferiors to gain their freedom and rule others’. In Romans, Paul ‘seeks to convince such people that the Jewish law holds neither hope of self-mastery nor righteousness before God’.21 Though it is undoubtedly one of the most important landmarks in interpretation on Romans, Stowers’ work ultimately fails to resolve several tensions. First, although he holds that Paul ‘believed the ethic of self-mastery to be a key issue in the struggle for the hearts and minds of gentiles’, he admits that self-control ‘is certainly not the most important theme in Romans’ and that Paul ‘de-emphasizes’ its importance in his letter to the Galatians as well.22 Second, though Stowers argues vehemently for a foundational respect for the explicit identity of the implied audience as Gentile Christians, he still reads parts of the letter as a polemic against Paul’s Jewish rivals who seek to teach Torah as a means to self-control. The apparent contradiction is temporarily resolved in the observation that ‘gentiles who observed certain practices of the law selectively’ as a route to self-mastery made up part of Paul’s audience – but Stowers never explains how these ‘judaizing’ Gentiles relate to the Gentiles whom Paul must warn not to boast over Israel (in 11.13-36). It appears that some of Stowers’ most important insights have not been carried through into as thoroughgoing a ‘rereading’ of the letter as they might be. On this point I observe that it is one of William Campbell’s contributions to insist on a single, coherent audience as the target of the letter’s rhetoric.23

19. The rhetoric of self-mastery (and the lack thereof) provided elites among subordinate peoples ‘a language through which they could claim a place among the ruling classes of the empire’; S. K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 51. 20. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans, p. 57. 21. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans, pp. 74, 79. 22. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans, pp. 66, 73. 23. Campbell finds ‘no indication of any pressure to judaize’ among the Roman assemblies; Campbell, ‘The Rule of Faith’, p. 275.

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3.1. ‘Declared to be Son of God with power’ (Rom. 1.3-4) Paul begins his letter by identifying himself as the apostle of Jesus Christ, ‘[God’s] son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead’ (1.3-4). Interpreters have long recognized the peculiar attention to Christology given in an epistolary prescript and the unusual nature of the christological claims made here. It seems a reasonable inference that Paul relies here on received traditions. But his purpose in making just these affirmations at the beginning of the letter requires explanation. Decades ago, Dieter Georgi hinted at an explanation that I believe further research has corroborated. On the assumption that Paul addresses a congregation that recognizes Jesus as risen and as ‘Son of God’, Paul’s particular characterization of these claims bears note. That Jesus was ‘descended from David according to the flesh’ does not appear to have been an important claim in the early Hellenistic churches but it sounds an important theme of this letter (compare 9.5). That his resurrection was specifically the confirmation of his sonship, characterized both by ‘power’ and ‘holiness’, suggests that Paul wants to do more than affirm the resurrection as such. It is at least possible that he intended this language to sound ironic echoes of the standard claims made by the emperors to be divi filius, ‘son’ of their divine predecessor and father in a lineage stretching back to Augustus and, behind him, Julius Caesar, and more specifically of the current claims made by Nero, in every inscription available to us, regarding the apotheosis of his (probably murdered) adoptive father Claudius. Jesus, according to Paul: descended from the seed of David according to the flesh, appointed son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead

Nero, on his own claims: descendant of Tiberius Caesar Augustus and Germanicus Caesar (who were) sons of the divine Augustus son of the divine (deified) Claudius

That apotheosis was widely ridiculed in Paul’s day as a political device – one might say, as a ‘technical ascension’. The force of Paul’s claims would have implied a contrast: he represented a true son of God, from a far older lineage, the object of ancient prophecy, confirmed as God’s regent not by legislative fiat but by God’s own powerful and holy action.24 That implied contrast would have set the tone for the rhetorical address that followed: the obedience of the nations, which constituted the ‘deep exigence’ of the whole

24.

See Elliott, Arrogance of Nations, pp. 61–72; Georgi, Theocracy, pp. 86–87.



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of the letter, was owed to God and God’s true son, Christ – not to the false claims made by the emperor and the Senate.25 3.2. The demonstration of God’s justice (Rom. 3.21-26) My argument here is predominantly negative and relies on the important observations of others. As Robert Jewett has shown, Paul appears remarkably uninterested here in what we might call the soteriological ‘mechanism’ of atonement in Christ’s death. Rather he is content to cite traditional formulas, without elaborating on them in any way that a contemporary systematic theologian would find useful in the least. Rather, Paul’s purpose is signalled by his repeated insistence on God’s self-vindication, which Jewett argues is Paul’s own ‘intrusion’ into the received formulas: But God’s righteousness … has been manifested apart from the law, that is, God’s righteousness [has been manifested] through faith in Jesus Christ … whom God put forward … for a demonstration of his [God’s] righteousness … to demonstrate his [God’s] righteousness in the present critical time, so that he [God] is righteous and makes righteous the one who has faith in Jesus. (Jewett’s trans.)

That is, Paul is less concerned to elaborate how people are ‘saved’ by Christ than to insist that this salvation is available to all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, equally, and that this impartiality demonstrates God’s justice. That insistence serves the larger rhetorical argument of the letter. Stowers makes a similar case, though with a much more forceful rebuttal of the ways traditional Christian theology has read particular doctrines of vicarious or substitutionary atonement into these lines. He shows that notions of atonement through blood sacrifice were simply absent in Paul’s world. ‘In ancient Jewish and ancient Mediterranean animal sacrifice and in the rites of numerous other cultures, the death of [an] animal was an incidental prelude to the ritual … Sacrifice is not about death or ritual killing.’ Further, ‘the purpose of the sacrificial system’ in the temple ‘was not to atone for personal sin or to provide a means for dealing with human alienation from God; these ideas have been projected onto the temple system by Christian and later Jewish theology’. Where the idea of an atoning death does appear – in 4 Maccabees – it remains ‘conceptually distinct from sacrifice’, having nothing to do with sacrifice or the temple cult. Stowers concludes, ‘if the key to Paul’s thought about Christ rests in the idea of his death as a sacrifice of vicarious atonement for sin, then why does the only plausible arguable evidence for that conception depend on the meaning of one word in Paul’s last extant letter’, that is, i9lasth/rion?26 25. On the rhetorical exigence of the letter see N. Elliott, The Rhetoric of Romans: Argumentative Constraint and Strategy and Paul’s Dialogue with Judaism (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), ch. 1. 26. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans, pp. 207, 211–13, passim.

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Rather, the rhetorical force of these lines, on Stowers’ view, lies in the ‘mercy’ or ‘divine forbearance’ (NRSV: th|= a0noxh|= tou= qeou=) shown in the delay of the messianic consummation until a means was provided for the reconciliation of repentant Gentiles. ‘Paul’s scenario in Romans has its basis in the idea that Jesus had delayed his messianic mission to provide an opportunity for the ungodly to repent.’ It is this delay – and not the provision of some otherwise unavailable sacrificial atonement mechanism – that Paul regards as the ‘forbearance’ of God. God’s previous ‘passing over’ of previously committed sins was not a matter of a blanket amnesty, but only of a delay of judgement, giving time for repentance (the same theme sounded in 2.3-11). The ultimate accountability of all to God’s judgement – sounded from the beginning of the letter – remains firmly in place; it has not been cancelled or absolved by a doctrine of vicarious atonement.27 So far, then, we see that Paul’s christological statements in Romans do not constitute the proclamation of a new means of salvation offered through Christ’s death; they are an affirmation of God’s righteousness or justice, which continues to require – how could it not? – the faithful obedience of all nations, the universal accountability of all to God’s judgement. But that theme is integral to the larger hortatory purpose of the letter: Paul seeks to require a particular obedience from the non-Jewish believers in Rome, their relinquishment of arrogance and boasting (ch. 11) and their welcoming embrace of the neighbours whom they consider ‘weak’ (14.1–15.13). Their positive response to that exhortation will make them participants in the ‘offering of the nations’ that Paul is seeking even then to accomplish (15.1416). 4. Corrective Christology (Rom. 5.12-26) In Romans 5 we encounter the richest concentration of christological statements in this or any of Paul’s letters. We also find a pattern of repeated contrasts that work to refute one understanding of Christ’s action and its consequences, and to assert another. That this argumentation is aimed as a corrective to potential attitudes among the non-Jewish believers in Rome gains force from Bill Campbell’s important argument that Paul’s target both in Romans 3 and Romans 6 was the same: a notion of ‘cheap grace’ among his hearers that fuelled their arrogant attitudes toward Israel.28 The eschatological horizon of Paul’s Christology is clear. Although elsewhere in the letter Paul is concerned to repudiate any claim to boasting, here he declares that those who are in Christ do have a boast: ‘we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God’ and ‘in our sufferings’, which produce endurance, which produces character, which produces hope (5.14). This eschatological horizon sets the tone for the argument that follows. 27. 28.

Elliott, Rhetoric of Romans, pp. 213–26. See (among other places) Campbell, Paul’s Gospel, ch. 11, esp. pp. 178–80.



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Repeatedly, Paul sets the future status of those who remain faithful over against present status, which is the guarantee of God’s love but not its ultimate goal. He establishes this contrast through adversative conjunctions (ou0 mo/non de\, a0lla/) and the comparative adverbial phrase pollw|~ ma~llon, which the NRSV translates ‘much more surely’: 8 But God has shown love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us: 9 Much more surely, then [pollw|~ ou]n ma~llon], now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely [pollw|~ ma~llon], having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. Not only that, but [ou0 mo/non de/, a0lla/ ] we even boast in God …

Rom. 5.12-21 draws a series of conclusions (dia\ tou=to, vv. 12, 18) structured as a series of correspondences, both negative (ou0x w( v … ou#twv) and positive (w3 sper … ou3twv, w( v … ou#twv): 12 Therefore, just as [w3 sper] through one man sin came into the world and through sin, death (came into the world), so, too [kai\ ou3twv] (that is, through one man) death came to all human beings, for all sinned; 13 (for until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not counted in the absence of law; 14 nevertheless [a0 lla/ ] death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression (who is a type of the one to come). 15 But the grace is not just as the transgression [ou0 x w( v … ou#twv]. For if by the one transgression the many died, how much more [pollw|~ ma~llon] did the grace of God and the free gift in grace offered through the one man Jesus Christ abound to the many. 16 And the gift is not just like [ou0x w( v] (the consequence of) one man who sinned. For the judgment coming from one trespass was condemnation (for all), but the free gift coming out of many transgressions is justification (for all). 17 For if through the transgression of one, death ruled through that one, how much more [pollw|~ ma~llon] will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness rule in life through the one, Jesus Christ. 18 Therefore [a1 ra ou]n]: just as [w( v] (what came) through one man’s transgression (was) condemnation for all human beings, so [ou#twv] one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. 19 For just as [w3 sper] by the one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so [ou#twv] by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 (But law came in, with the result that the transgression multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more), 21 With the result that just as [w3 sper] sin ruled in death, so also [ou#twv] grace might rule through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul is apparently as concerned to reject (or refute) certain ideas about the effects of Christ’s death as to affirm others. It is reasonable to infer that this concern arises because Paul seeks to counteract, or to ward off, ideas that he perceives are being shared by believers in Rome or that they may be tempted to adopt. Looking at what is negated in these lines, it seems that

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Paul opposes an understanding of Christ’s work that sets grace in a sort of balanced equivalence with sin – as we might expect in an understanding of atonement as meaning primarily or exclusively the forgiveness of sins. But according to Paul, the grace given in Christ’s obedience is not just an answer to sin or transgression. Rather it is ‘much more’: it answers the much more devastating dominion of sin over all who have sinned and over the whole world, a dominion that leads inexorably to death. Those who have been united with Christ are now justified, now stand acquitted before God – but what is offered in Christ is so much more: it is the imminent triumph of God’s righteousness over a disobedient world. It is reasonable, furthermore, to imagine that the sort of ‘weak’ Christology that Paul opposes here would have been congenial to those who held attitudes of superiority and even of supersession vis-à-vis Jews and Judaism. If atonement is imagined as a ‘zero-sum’ operation in which transgressions are ‘forgiven’ much as debts are cancelled, then the full benefit of atonement may be enjoyed as a possession now. Those who are evidently in good standing with God enjoy the fullness of that benefit; those who appear to stand outside God’s grace, on the other hand, have evidently lost or forfeited that benefit and have no apparent prospect of receiving it. It would seem, then, that the attitude Bill Campbell has described as ‘incipient Marcionism’ and ‘antinomianism’ among the non-Jewish Christians in Rome may have had a potential christological correlate as well. At least we can say that Paul seeks to oppose such notions among his audience. This does not necessarily mean that the problems in Rome can be accounted for simply as the expressions of an inadequate Christology among the Romans. Certain notions, prevalent enough in the Roman environment, of clemency as the mercy shown by a powerful patron – of necessity expressed as preferential treatment given to some, but not others – may have inspired a dual perception: that dispossessed Jews had failed to receive divine mercy (just as they had failed to be worthy of imperial mercy) and that they had been replaced by others who had received mercy – both by escaping the public opprobrium heaped upon Jews and by being received into the fellowship of Christ. Conclusion With regard to Romans 3, Robert Jewett writes that as Paul teaches it Redemption through Christ differs from other concepts of redemption, which discriminated in favor of chosen peoples by offering them escape at the price of the death of others, by offering ransom for the privileged while others remain in captivity, or by freeing favored slaves while others remain in bondage.29

29.

Jewett, Romans, p. 283.



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We cannot say whether other ‘concepts of redemption’ were active among the Roman Christians, though it is clear enough that imperial ideology held out the prospect of receiving divine favour through the person of the emperor, or of being excluded from it.30 It is nevertheless clear enough that Paul’s purpose in the letter is not merely to affirm the saving benefits of Christ – to the contrary, he can presume his audience shares his belief in these, and therefore can simply evoke them with a word or phrase – but to criticize and correct possible misunderstandings of those benefits. His ‘christological’ statements therefore serve the larger purpose of the letter, which involves an admonition against non-Jewish ‘boasting’ over Israel and an implicit engagement with the ideological claims of the Roman Empire on the ‘hearts and minds’ of its subjects. In these terms we may regard the christological claims in Romans as irreducibly political as well as theological.

30.

See Elliott, Arrogance of Nations, chapter 3 (‘Clementia’).

Chapter 4

‘Callused’, Not ‘Hardened’: Paul’s Revelation of Temporary Protection Until All Israel Can Be Healed Mark D. Nanos William Campbell is keen to confront readings of Romans that idealize Christian superiority at the expense of Jews and Judaism. I hope this study can contribute to his lifetime effort to challenge the stubborn – perhaps one might even call it hardened – grip of that tradition by revisiting chapter 11, where the prevailing translations and interpretations of certain words and phrases continue to blunt the force of Paul’s otherwise benevolent argument for the temporary, protected state of his fellow Jews, even though some (indeed, most) of them did not share Paul’s point of view about the meaning of Jesus Christ. In spite of Paul’s explicit effort to check prideful attitudes toward Jews among the non-Jews to whom he writes in Rome, a negative characterization of Jews naturally arises from Paul’s use of pw/rwsiv in Rom. 11.25, which is typically translated ‘hardening,’ and thus, ‘a hardening has come upon part of Israel’ (NRSV), or ‘that a partial hardening has happened to Israel’ (NASB). Whether translated to indicate that only some Israelites have been hardened, as in the NRSV, or that Israel itself has been hardened to some degree, as in the NASB, commentators also regularly conflate this reference to hardness with God’s hardening of the heart of Pharaoh – although Paul does not refer to the heart of Israelites being hardened. A negative judgement of the condition of the Jewish other is thereby perpetuated, however unwittingly, within an interpretive discourse surrounded by language designed to argue against just such hostile assessments of their condition. This exegetical tradition makes it hard to ignore that, in spite of the uniquely positive role Romans 11 has played in the crafting of Nostra Aetate (No. 4) and other similarly sensitive Christian re-evaluations of Jews and Judaism since the Shoah, the discourse by which this generosity of spirit is expressed continues to be constrained contextually by the need to account for Paul’s attribution of hardness to his fellow Jews. It can hardly avoid communicating negative assessments of the other to some degree regardless of the best of intentions, at least at the exegetical level.



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While I respectfully believe that Christians should hermeneutically distance themselves from such judgemental decisions about the motives of others or their standing before God if they arise in their sacred texts – which, after all, Paul instructs (2.1!) – in this case the challenge can be made at the exegetical level, for Paul’s language in chapter 11 need not express such negative sentiments. By attending to this text’s metaphorical attributes, including Paul’s specific use here of pw/rwsiv rather than sklhro/v, and its role in the larger context of his argument, the harsh visual representations that perpetuate this judgemental characterization, however unintentionally, can be revised – if not replaced. 1. Pw/ rwsiv versus Sklhro/v Sklhro/v is regularly applied to the hardening of the heart in the sense of being strengthened to express firm, stubborn resistance to God’s will, or being insensitive to it. Paul uses the verbal form sklhru/ nw, in 9.17-18, in keeping with the usage in Exod. 9.12, 16, where it metaphorically describes God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (LXX usually for Hebrew h#$q, also qzx). The sklhro/v word-group has to do with things hard or rough to touch, harsh sounds, or harsh or bitter tastes and smells. When used metaphorically, it generally connotes harsh or hard in the sense of austere, stern, insensitive, or stubborn.1 Instead of eliminating Pharaoh, God is represented as making him stubbornly resistant to God’s will so that the people of Israel would be freed. This hardening is undertaken in order to heighten the impact when Pharaoh is ultimately compelled to change his mind in the face of the inexorable suffering that his resistance provokes. In this way, God’s power and thus name are made known among the nations. But Paul does not use sklhro/ v or cognates to describe the state of Israelites; instead, he uses pw/ rwsiv in 11.25 (and as a passive verb in v. 7: e0pwrw/ qhsan) to describe the state of some (many) of his fellow Israelites.2 Pw/ rwsiv (verb pwro/w) refers to a ‘callus’ (verb: to callus) not to ‘hardness’ per se. Pw/ rwsiv is not a word common to the Tanakh. It is used once in verbal form in the Septuagint, Job 17.7, to refer to eyes ‘growing dim’ from anger or grief (MT: hhk). As will be discussed, the context indicates that it is not ‘hardness,’or even ‘blindness’ per se, but ‘impairment’ of sight that is at issue, which is better expressed by the Greek variant peph/rwntai. Pw/ rwsiv is not used in the Pseudepigrapha, Josephus or Philo. It is common in medical discussions in antiquity. According to Hippocrates, De alimento 1. LSJ, p. 1612; K. L. and M. A. Schmidt, TDNT 5.1028–31. 2. It is also useful to note that interpreters often refer to Isa. 6.10 as a cross reference for Rom. 11.7 and 25, but in Isaiah it is yet another different word, paxu/nw (MT: Nm#$), to swell or thicken or make firm or fat; figuratively, to make impervious (to water), insensitive (Schmidt and Schmidt, TDNT 5.1025). The point is that Isaiah is to speak the word so that it will not penetrate the hearts of the target audience.

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53, it has to do with a process of healing following an injury: ‘Marrow nutriment of bone, and through this a callus forms [Muelo\ v trofh\ o0ste/ou, dia\ tout~ o e0pi pwrou~tai] (Loeb; trans. W. H. S. Jones).3 In other words, the formation of a callus – which involves a process of hardening, to be sure – is to offer protection so that the injured area can sustain life. It promotes healing of broken bones or wounds, not harm or destruction, or metaphorical resistance. It creates an area less sensitive to touch, but that too is a positive feature versus the continuation of the sensation of pain where the injury occurred. There are several options worth exploring to translate and interpret pw/ rwsiv in terms of the process Paul has been communicating throughout: some Israelites are temporarily stumbling or suffering an injury that can be and will be healed, witnessed in metaphorical terms by a callus on these broken branches.4 Given the negative valence of hardness in English combined with the derisive association to the disposition of Pharaoh’s heart, hardening is not a helpful or an accurate translation choice for Paul’s discussion of the condition of the Israelites he seeks to discuss. The difference implied can be profound; translating this as hardened in the sense of obdurate, stubborn, or insensitive hearts may obscure the very thrust of Paul’s argument. This problem is evident in most discussions of this passage, for the prevailing approaches interpret hardness in a way that cannot avoid undermining the sympathetic force of Paul’s argument, and thus the sympathetic interpreter, inadvertently but ineluctably, winds up expressing a negative judgement of intentions in the midst of seeking to communicate a message of goodwill.5 3. See also De fractures 23.10; De articulis 14.17, 24; 15.6; 49.18. Celsus, De Medicina. Aretaeus (trans. W. G. Spencer; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971 [1935 edn]), p. 521, explains how to bind a broken bone tightly, ‘because in this position callus grows …’; see also pp. 527, 575. It is discussed several times in Galen, e.g., Ars Medica 1.387.18, and especially in his commentary (e.g., 18b.398–401, 412, 429, 505, 531, 541, 789) on Hippocrates’ De fractures. Cf. LSJ, p. 1561; Schmidt and Schmidt, TDNT 5.1025–26; J. H. Thayer (ed.), Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Being Grimm’s Wilke’s Clavis Novus Testamenti (New York, Cincinnati and Chicago: American Book Company, 1889), p. 559. 4. I want to thank Daniel Stramara for encouraging me to investigate the positive aspects of the translation ‘callus’ here, which I raised in passing in The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), pp. 261–62, but did not pursue. Following more recent detailed work on the allegory of the olive tree and its branches, and thus the relevance of this translation choice in v. 25, I am now prepared to see the positive elements of this metaphorical tree terminology in the forest of the Romans 11 argument, one might say; cf. M. D. Nanos, ‘“Broken Branches”: A Pauline Metaphor Gone Awry? (Romans 11:11-36)’, in F. Wilk and J. R. Wagner (eds), Between Gospel and Election: Explorations in the Interpretation of Romans 9–11 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. 339–76. 5. Differently, but informatively, the opportunity to intentionally express criticism of Jews by way of this language is exemplified by Chrysostom: ‘“That blindness in part hath happened unto Israel.” Here again he levels a blow at the Jew, while seeming to take down the Gentile’ (‘Homily 19’, Homilies on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, trans. J. B. Morris).



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Yet Paul does not mention the heart, and there is no evidence that pw/ rwsiv was used to refer to the heart during Paul’s time. Pw/ rwsiv is attested later in Mk 3.5, Jn 12.40, and in the Pauline tradition responsible for Eph. 4.18, and it became more common in commentaries and elsewhere in theological discussions after the second century ce, perhaps adumbrating the crossover that is common to English usage of hardness when translating pw/ rwsiv as if synonymous with sklhro/ v.6 We will return to discuss the case of 2 Cor. 3.14, which refers to impaired vision. 2. The Context for Paul’s Use of pw/ rwsiv in Rom. 11.25 Paul moves away from formal allegorical development of the olive tree allegory of vv. 17-24 when he begins verse 25. This change is evident in several ways, not least by moving from addressing a singular olive shoot in the allegory to ‘you Gentiles’ in the plural, whom he does not want to be ignorant of a mysterious process he seeks to reveal: ‘For I do not want you to be unperceptive regarding this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you would not be mindful (only) for yourselves.’ It may be that, whereas the wild shoot stood implicitly for the non-Jews by way of a single cutting in the allegory in order to highlight the smallness and precariousness of their place among the people of God without suggesting that Paul has but one person in his sights, now Paul turns to addressing these non-Jews directly, and thus, in the plural. 6. Cf. Shep. 30.1; 47.4; Pseudo-Clementina 158.8; Theophilus, Ad Autolycum 2.35.32; Clemens Alexandrinus, Protrepticus 9.83.3.6; Stromata 1.18.88.3.2; Origen, Comm. in Evangelium Matthaei 11.14.68. 1 Clem. 51:3 still uses sklhru=nw with kardi/a; as does also Barn. 9:5. I do not find grounds for the Schmidts’ claim that ‘in the NT’ it ‘is always fig., usually of the heart. It refers to hardening of the Jews in … R. 11:7…’ (TDNT 5.1026), or commentaries that refer to hardening of the heart similarly in discussions of Romans 11. For discussion of why in each of these later NT cases the meaning ‘hardened’ is unlikely as well, and of the variants for each, see J. Armitage Robinson, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians: A Revised Text and Translation with Exposition and Notes (London and New York: Macmillan, 1903), pp. 264–74. He concludes that in each case in the NT ‘obtuseness or intellectual blindness is the meaning indicated by the context’ (p. 273), not hardness, a finding that this study will challenge for blindness too, and he also shows that ancient translators and commentators approached pw/ rwsiv and ph/rwsiv as interchangeable. Robinson, Ephesians, p. 274, does not like the choice of or description of callus for pw/ rwsiv, Thayer (ed.), Greek-English Lexicon, or when callus is played off in the sense of ‘a covering has grown over the heart’ by W. Sanday and A. C. Headlam, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Epistle to the Romans (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2nd edn, 1926 [Robinson is responding to the first edition]), p. 314. Their comment is about Rom. 11.7 (note that they read 11.25: ‘that hardening of heart which has come upon Israel’), but Robinson seeks to challenge the translation ‘harden’ in particular, and does not approach Rom. 11.7, 25 as representing the metaphorical imagery I suggest. R. Jewett, Romans (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), pp. 694, 699–700, translates pw/ rwsiv in v. 25 as ‘obtuseness’, ‘as a failure to discern and to see what was simultaneously a willful act and divine punishment’.

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In contrast to Isaiah’s prophetic speech to his fellow Israelites in a way designed to prevent understanding,7 Paul declares that he seeks to make a mystery clear to his non-Israelite audience so that they will avoid the pitfalls of insensitive arrogance toward certain Israelites, and thus escape the disastrous consequences that follow from preoccupation with only their own wisdom and success. We might expect to find Paul thus employing simple, direct speech at this point to enhance clarity and avoid misunderstanding; but we do not. Instead, Paul continues to draw on metaphorical language in vv. 25-26a, and then on a conflation of the enigmatic texts of Isaiah 59.2021 and 27.9 in the balance of vv. 26b-27. These ostensible proofs for his argument are also highly metaphorical, as is also their own context in Isaiah, which is itself full of inscrutable twists and turns; moreover, they do not easily align with what they are cited by Paul to prove.8 One wonders if the mystery has become clearer or more confused, even if Paul’s audience is now made keenly aware that there is something else going on that they should attend to seeing, something that should make them humble instead of filled with themselves.9 I propose that the metaphorical word choices employed in 11.25-26a are neither random, nor chosen to introduce a new set of visual representations around the theme of hard-heartedness, but continue to draw from the olive tree imagery that preceded them in vv. 17-24. Although Paul is not simply developing the allegory formally,10 the theme stays the same: Paul sets out an argument in order to censure presumptuousness among the Christ-believing non-Israelites in Rome, lest they become ‘wise in themselves’ (e9autoi=v 7. That Isaiah’s prophetic language is itself that which causes misunderstanding is argued in B. R. Trick’s 2009 SBL Annual Meeting paper, ‘“Lest Their Hearts Understand”: Hardening Hearts through Misunderstanding in Isa 6:1 – 9:6’, a copy of which he was kind enough to make available to me. 8. A reading of Isaiah 27 and 59 and the chapters and themes around them, including many allegories and metaphors from trees and plant life – which perhaps triggered as well as informed Paul’s developments of these allegories and metaphors – cannot be taken up in detail here. Cf. F. Wilk, Die Bedeutung des Jesajabuches für Paulus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998); J. R. Wagner, Heralds of the Good News: Isaiah and Paul ‘In Concert’ in the Letter to the Romans (Leiden: Brill, 2002); K. Nielsen, There is Hope for a Tree: The Tree as Metaphor in Isaiah (Sheffield: JSOT, 1989; original Danish: G. E. C. Gads Forlag: Copenhagen, 1985); J. T. Hibbard, Intertextuality in Isaiah 24–27: The Reuse and Evocation of Earlier Texts and Traditions (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006); Nanos, ‘“Broken Branches”’. 9. Cf. D. Patte, ‘A Post-Holocaust Biblical Critic Responds’, in C. Grenholm and D. Patte (eds), Reading Israel in Romans: Legitimacy and Plausibility of Divergent Interpretations (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), pp. 225–45, esp. 231–32. 10. Drawing on M. Black, ‘Metaphor’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy 55 (1954), pp. 273–94, esp. 275, metaphor refers to a figure of speech (trope) that communicates a thing, idea, or action by substituting a word or expression that denotes a different thing, idea, or action, often a word from a visual image or sound, suggesting a shared quality between the two words or expressions that remains at an imaginary level. An allegory is the development of an extended metaphor.



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fro/nimoi).11 Yet, like the allegory itself, as well as its uneven fit with the previous allegories of the stumbling and of the dough, this metaphorical language can be as misleading as it can be enlightening. Elsewhere I discussed why it is problematic to use such metaphorical language about grafting as if it is plain speech, and as if Paul had stated that it was Israel into which the graft was planted.12 The tree and root should logically be some entity other than Israel, which remains unnamed. Thus the wild olive shoot has been grafted into a tree and partaken of the root alongside of the branches that remained (that is, among the Israelites [‘among them’ in v. 17]), but not into Israel. The grafted branch joins alongside of Israelite branches, the tree is some entity large enough to encompass members of Israel and of the other nations simultaneously, such as ‘the people of God’ or ‘the righteous ones’, but the tree does not appear to be ‘Israel’ per se. I have also discussed why it is lexically and exegetically preferable to translate Paul’s reference to the broken branches as ‘broken’, but not ‘broken off’.13 This allows the allegory of the olive tree in vv. 17-24 to correspond to the language on either side of it: beforehand, in vv. 11-15, with the allegory of stumbling but not fallen, through the portrayal of enhanced results for the non-Jews when these Israelites regain their step rather than confirming the zero-sum thinking that their absence increased the opportunities for the audience, and by the explanation that Paul’s own ministry to the nations is for Israel’s restoration rather than a testament to their failure or replacement, along with the theme of continuity expressed in the allegories of v. 16. This message of continuity rather than termination remains the theme after the olive tree allegory as well, with the assertion that ‘all Israel will be restored’ (vv. 25-27), because these Israelites, while presently ‘alienated for your sake’, are ‘beloved for the sake of the fathers’, for ‘the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable’ (vv. 28-29).14 The proof-text Paul weaves together in vv. 26-27 11. In addition to repeating the accusation of presumption (u(yhla_ fro/nei) in v. 20, note also the idea that in v. 18 the wild branch did not support the root, but the root the branch. 12. Nanos, ‘“Broken Branches”’. 13. Nanos, ‘“Broken Branches”’, discusses how Paul moves from describing the plight of some of the natural branches by changing the verb from e0kkla/w (broken as in dislocated) in vv. 17-21 to e0kko/ptw (broken off) in vv. 22-24, when he seeks to describe the state that will result for the wild olive. This logical conundrum develops when he turns by way of diatribe to attributing to the wild olive shoot the claim to have supplanted the broken branches and thus gained advantage over them in v. 19, to which Paul responds with an a fortiori argument describing the all-the-more-severe state that the wild shoot should fear if it does not desist. 14. The NRSV translation ‘they are enemies of God’ is most disconcerting, not least because ‘of God’ is not attested in any manuscripts. The contrast is between two adjectives, ‘enemied [e0xqroi/]’ (better: ‘alienated’) and ‘beloved [agaphtoi/]’, the first ‘for your sake’, and the second ‘for the sake of the fathers’. See N. Beck, ‘Translations of the New Testament for Our Time’, in M. C. Boys, C. Lanham, et al., Seeing Judaism Anew: Christianity’s Sacred Obligation (a Sheed and Ward Book; Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005), pp. 200–10, esp. 204–06; J. Sievers, ‘“God’s Gifts and Call Are Irrevocable”: The Reception of Romans 11:29 through the Centuries and Christian– Jewish Relations’, in Grenholm and Patte (eds), Reading Israel in Romans, pp. 127–73.

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from Isa. 59.20-21 and 27.9 attests to a time when ‘the Deliverer … will remove ungodliness from Jacob’, and because of the covenant relationship will ‘take away their sins’. Note, not remove the ungodly, or take away the sinners, but cleanse and restore Israel after a time of discipline has accomplished God’s design.15 And Paul wraps up his argument in vv. 30-32 by arguing that the present lack of ‘persuadedness’ (to join Paul in declaring the gospel to the nations) by these Jews, and thus their need for mercy, follows after but is intimately linked to the former lack of ‘persuadedness’ (of God alone versus idols) by these non-Jews, which led to their need for mercy. Thus, now all are equally ‘joined together’ in the need for God’s mercy, in view of which Paul calls for mercy toward rather than judgement of each other.16 In each of these cases Paul seeks to connect inextricably the favour that these non-Jews have received through the good news message with the present suffering of disfavour, of discipline being experienced by Israel through the some (many) Israelites who are not (yet) declaring this message to the nations alongside of Paul. This stage, he argues just as forcefully, is temporary, yet unquestionably to be followed by their rescue, not destruction.17 All of these developments are, according to Paul, bound up in a mysterious, interlocking scheme of God’s design. Thus things are not as they might otherwise seem, for the present anomalous stage is required before the promised harmonious conclusion can materialize. 15. It is possible that Paul is referring to the removal of sins from the nations with the citation of Isa. 27.9, which uses a pronoun here (‘their sins’), and is stitched into the place where continued citation of Isa. 59.21 would be expected to appear. He thus weaves together a proof-text that explains the intertwined positive destinies of Israel and the nations, with the removal of ungodliness from Jacob (Israel) covered by the citation of 59.20. The balance of 59.21, which Paul does not cite, describes the continued role of Israel, but perhaps Paul wants to turn to the effects of that role for the nations (‘until when the fullness of the nations commences’) through the introduction of 27.9 instead. In this sense, Paul may see the forgiveness of the sins of the nations – for which he has argued throughout the letter and in v. 25 in particular – prefigured in the covenant made with Israel, yet unexpectedly not transpiring before the complete removal of the ungodliness from all Israel (‘that a callus temporarily has formed for Israel … and thus all Israel will be restored’), these multiple aspects being simultaneously at work. 16. I see no reason to translate a0pei/qeia and cognates in these verses as ‘disobedience’, when the idea of failure to be persuaded (‘not-being-persuadedness’) of that which Paul believes they should be persuaded makes sense of the context, even if English does not provide an exact equivalent. Not being persuaded of a propositional claim and disobeying what one knows to be a propositional truth are not the same thing. I also propose that God ‘(closely) joined together’ (i.e., ‘has drawn together’, ‘integrated’) everyone rather than that God ‘confined’ or ‘imprisoned’ everyone in this state in order to demonstrate the equal need of his mercy for everyone, Jew and non-Jew, makes more sense of his use of sugklei/w in v. 32 (cf. Euripides, Bacch. 1300; Plato, Tim. 76a; Crat. 117e; Isocrates, Or., 12[Panath.].24; 15[Amtid.].68; Xenophon, Cyr. 7.1.33; Thucydides, 4.35.1; 5.72.1; see LSJ, p. 1665 [III–IV]). 17. In some Jewish traditions, that Israel has a favoured status is actually exemplified by God’s discipline delivered quickly, even harshly, in order to bring it ultimately to faithfulness instead of destruction (2 Macc. 6.12-17; cf. Ps. 94.12; Prov. 3.11-12; Jer. 30.11; Lam. 3.31-33; Jdt. 8.27; Wis. 12.1-2, 26; Pss. Sol. 10.1; 13.7; 16.1-5).



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Many of the current translation choices undermine Paul’s argument that Israel is presently suffering a temporary divided stage involving the remnant and the rest in a larger plan God has designed in order to begin the process of gathering members from the other nations into the people of God (alongside Israelites, but not as Israelites) through the gospel. Once this gathering from the nations begins, it will be followed by the restoration of the rest of these Israelites, and thus of all Israel – but these Israelites are by no means to be regarded as having already lost their standing within God’s covenant with Israel.18 The usual choices of ‘broken off’ (vv. 17-21), ‘hardened’ (vv. 7, 25), ‘enemies [of God]’ (v. 28), and ‘disobedient’ (vv. 30-32), all work against Paul’s otherwise generous thesis of vicarious and temporary suffering on the part of some Israelites and thereby Israel, and thus the present need for the Christ-following non-Israelites to regard them with respect and compassion. Moreover, beginning with the ‘therefore’ of 12.1 through the end of the letter, Paul’s audience is instructed to behave graciously toward these Israelites.

18. In traditional approaches, the premise is that these Israelites have been removed from their covenant standing and thus, like non-Israelites, need to be ‘saved’ in the sense of being outsiders brought back into the people of God. But Paul’s argument assumes they are still the people of God, albeit in a state of discipline (variously named and described, including alternately as a result of God’s initiative or in response to their unfaithfulness or unresponsiveness) that results in the need to be restored to good standing. The so-called two-covenant approaches react to the traditional notion, yet also work from within its framework to the degree that they propose these Israelites are ‘saved’ by Torah (thereby granting the need to find a way to describe an avenue for salvation); at the same time, this same framework remains in place in the arguments from which critics of the two-covenant approach work, however much I might agree with some of their criticisms of the twocovenant paradigm (e.g. R. Hvalvik, ‘A “Sonderweg” for Israel: A Critical Examination of a Current Interpretation of Romans 11.25-27’, JSNT 38 (1990), pp. 87–107; T. L. Donaldson, ‘Jewish Christianity, Israel’s Stumbling and the Sonderweg Reading of Paul’, JSNT 29 (1) (2006), pp. 27–54; Ch. Zoccali, ‘“And so all Israel will be saved”: Competing Interpretations of Romans 11.26 in Pauline Scholarship’, JSNT 30 (3) (2008), pp. 289– 318, esp. 297–303. But Israelites do not need to be ‘saved’ in a way that parallels the needs of non-Israelites; some need to be saved from their errors (i.e., in the sense of having sinful acts forgiven, or periods of discipline lifted), but not in the sense of having become non-members of the people of God. Paul appears to be working from the notion that Israel is in a covenant based on promises to the fathers, into which Torah was introduced later for Israel in order that Israelites might live rightly and declare God’s words to the nations, so that they too could enter into the covenant with the fathers for the blessing of the nations. But the nations do not enter into the covenant with Israel as if becoming Israelites, and thus not into a relationship with Torah on the same terms as Israelites. It is thus one covenant with different aspects for Israelites and for those from the other nations who turn to Israel’s God as the one God of all humankind (both/and, rather than either/or). See W. S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006), pp. 33–53, passim; M. D. Nanos, ‘Paul and the Jewish Tradition: The Ideology of the Shema’, in P. Spitaler (ed.), Celebrating Paul: Festschrift in Honor of J. A. Fitzmyer and J. Murphy-O’Connor (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, forthcoming 2010).

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Translation alternatives exist in each case that perpetuate Paul’s sympathetic (if patronizing) message, and the spirit of the metaphor of ‘stumbling’ but ‘not fallen’ (v. 11). These include ‘callused’ in the sense of ‘protected’ rather than ‘hardened’, which this chapter specifically addresses, but also ‘broken’ rather than ‘broken off’ in vv. 17-21, ‘alienated’ rather than ‘enemies’ – especially the unwarranted ‘enemies of God’ – in v. 28, and ‘not-persuadedness’ rather than ‘disobedience’ in vv. 30-32.19 In addition, as will be discussed, the preliminary and temporary nature of the present state of some Israelites and thus Israel in Paul’s argument can be highlighted by translating the prepositional phrase a0po_ me/rouv in v. 25 as ‘temporarily’, rather than as if referring to ‘part’ of Israel, or the whole of Israel ‘partially’, even though each of these aspects remains relevant. 3. The Metaphors and Messages of 11.25-27 In vv. 25-26, at least three of the key terms, and the context of their usage, can be understood to draw on tree metaphors: pw/ rwsiv (callus), plh/rwma (fullness),20 and swqh/setai (salvation/restoration/rescue/return to health).21 The texts from Isaiah that Paul cites are not only set in metaphorical and 19. To name but two other translation choices that perpetuate this disconnect, in vv. 11-12, wherein Paul denies these Israelites have fallen but asserts that they have merely stumbled or tripped, paraptw/ mati is often translated ‘transgression’ (‘by their transgression’; NASB), although this obscures the metaphorical language at play here, and the idea the word carries in general of ‘misstep’ (NRSV: ‘through their stumbling’), and the translation ‘fall’ in the KJV and ASV reverses the denial that they have fallen. In v. 17, the NRSV expresses replacement theology with ‘and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place’, when the Greek expresses co-participation: ‘but you, a wild olive [shoot], were being grafted among them [su_ de _ a0grie/laiov w2 n e0nekentri/sqhv e0n au0toi=v]’ (as in NASB, KJV). 20. In the case of plh/rwma, this is common plant terminology. Theophrastus used this language regularly, e.g., in Caus. plant. 3.15.3 (line 10) he writes plhroi= for how the fluid in vines ‘fills’ them when dressed. In Caus. plant. 1.13.9 (line 6), he describes how a tree harvested early can ‘fill up’ (a)naplhrou=ntai) again and become pregnant. In Caus. plant. 1.2.5 (line 10), sumplhrou= n refers to ‘fill out’ as in the space around the tree, while 1.13.3 (line 3) describes how trees after sprouting and fruit production in spring are ‘replenished’ (a)ntiplhrou= sqai) with food again (pa/ lin). Hist. plant. 3.17.1 (line 11), describes a tree coming back from deterioration as ‘renewed’ (e0canaplhrou/tai); in 5.6.7, a root will ‘fill out’ (e0kplhro/w) the whole space. Besides the general sense of a plant or any part of a plant ‘coming in’ or ‘beginning’ to grow or bud or blossom fully at some point, in terms of grafting, fullness is envisaged to come in / commence (ei0se/lqh) when a grafted branch begins to draw life from the root of the tree. Theoph., Caus. plant. 1.6.3, discusses how a graft ‘takes root’ (r(izou= tia) and ‘seals over’ (e0pismai/ne), after also discussing how bark grows over the graft and encloses it. See also Hist. plant. 5.2. 21. Theophrastus uses sw?/ zw to signify the ‘preserving’ or ‘saving’ or ‘restoring’ of a plant or tree, or the various parts of them, like the roots, stem, or branches; see Caus. plant. 1.4.5 (line 8); 1.7.2 (line 7); 1.19.5 (line 7); 1.22.2 (line 8); 2.16.5 (line 1); 2.17.5 (line 12); 5.16.2; 5.18.4 (line 3).



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allegorical contexts, but largely turn around images of plants and trees.22 Just before Isa. 27.9, which Paul cites in 11.27, stands Isa. 27.6 (LXX): ‘they that are coming are the children of Jacob. Israel shall bud and blossom, and the world shall be filled with his fruit.’23 We must be careful not to expect that Paul’s use of metaphor around a tree or plant theme functions as another fully developed allegory, or require it to comport too closely with what he has developed in the previous allegory; even the allegory of the broken branches did not correspond well to the allegory of the stumbling but not fallen Israelites that preceded it.24 The limitations of metaphor, and of Paul’s employment thereof, are evident to the degree that the branches are ultimately presented to be in need of (the miracle of) re-grafting. Paul got tangled up in the web of his own rhetorical weaving while seeking to communicate the a fortiori severity that awaited the wild olive if it would presumptuously suppose that it had replaced these Israelites in God’s favour. In this same vein, Isaiah’s use of and mixing of allegories in the context of the language Paul cites in vv. 26-27 should not be expected to work seamlessly or comprehensively in Paul’s argument, although we should try to make sense of the message they are enlisted to support. It is unclear here if Paul envisages ‘all Israel’ to be all of the branches that are Israelites, or the whole tree. The latter view informs the conflation of ‘the church is Israel’ positions. That he does not name the tree or trunk or boughs but only branches may itself be instructive: creating a comprehensive picture of Israel or the church is not the point of the allegory. Rather, his goal is to explain the unusual and precarious place of the Christ-following non-Jews among the Israelites, so that they will humbly understand their own role is by God’s design to live on behalf of all Israel’s restoration, not to (mis)judge those Israelites in a temporary state of suffering. In vv. 25-26a, the Israelites are still identifiable, just as are the Gentiles, so that the ‘all Israel’ remains distinguishable from the implied ‘all the members of the nations’,25 who are somehow an indication of the timing of this process. They are beneficiaries of the vicarious suffering of these Israelites, however difficult that may be to comprehend. In other words, these groups, Israel and the nations, represent entities distinguishable from each other, different branches, while the implied tree is 22. Isaiah 59–61 are full of plant metaphors, as are Isaiah 27–28. The context of Isaiah 59 is God coming to the rescue of Israel when no one else does. The context of Isaiah 27 is the gathering of Israelites from the dispersion (vv. 12-13 announce the regathering). 23. L. C. L. Brenton (trans.), The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, with an English Translation; and with Various Readings and Critical Notes (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1972); NRSV, based on the MT: ‘in days to come Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots, and fill the whole world with fruit’. 24. A central topic of discussion in Nanos, ‘Broken Branches’. 25. That this distinction remains important to Paul is a central thesis of all of W. S. Campbell’s work, as well as the work of Kathy Ehrensperger, a point with which I heartily agree.

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a broader category into which they can both be incorporated, become one, such as the people of God, or the church, which will consist of ‘all Israel’ and ‘all the other nations’ too. In vv. 25-26, Paul discloses specifically the unexpected way that the ‘restoration’ of ‘all Israel’ is taking place (‘and in this way’), which includes a temporary injury to but also protection of some Israelites and thus Israel (‘a callus has formed temporarily for Israel’), a rescue involving discipline and forgiveness foretold in Isaiah, which Paul cites as proof, as well as the dawning of the ‘fullness’ of the nations (‘until when the fullness of the nations begins’). 3.1 That a callus … has developed for Israel (o3ti pw/ rwsiv … tw=? I)srah_l ge/gonen) Paul represents the current state of Israel or of some Israelites (some natural branches) as that of having become pw/ rwsiv (for the sake of simplicity, we will postpone translating a)po_ me/rouv until after the other elements have been discussed). The problem with translating this state in terms of ‘hardened’ has been discussed, and to this can be added the problem that the negative value judgement in the language of hardening in English would not contribute to communicating a mystery calculated to confront conceit toward these Jews from the non-Jews Paul addresses – which is the point of this disclosure. Although Theophrastus (c. 370–285 bce), who wrote two extensive treatments of plants, does not appear to use pwro/w, he discusses developments in plants in similar terms when writing of a growth or callus or knot (o1zov, knot, corresponding to the eye of a vine, scion/offshoot from which a branch or leaf springs, but also used for unproductive knots), and he also refers to a ‘joint’ [go/nu] in olive trees that forms where a cut or injury has occurred (Caus. plant. 1.6.3; Hist. plant. 1.8.1-4;26 3.7.1; 5.2; see also Columella, Rust. 4.24.4-6). In trees and plants, it is derived from the sap (Theoph., Caus. plant. 5.16.4). This process closes the wound to protect the tree (Caus. plant. 3.7.5-12).27 With fresh growth over the callused area, the callus becomes a knot within the trunk or branches. In modern plant terminology, that process is referred to explicitly as the forming of a callus.

26. Knotting, ‘as though one thing were made thereby into two and a fresh growing point produced, the cause being mutilation [ph/rwsin] or some other such reason …’ (1.8.4). 27. Theoph., Caus. plant. 5.16.4, observes that olive trees endure splitting because they quickly close their wounds with sap (which makes them hard to split). He says the olive tree is protected by a coating/bark (folio/ v) that seals up/protects (a )poste/gw) the piece cut from it to preserve/guard (thre/w) its life (1.4.5). And for vines, he writes of a sap/ juice (o )po/ v)-like ‘tear of gum’ or ‘exudation’ (da/kruow) that collects at the cut, which must run off so the scion can be dry when the graft is made (1.6.8; 6.11.16).



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If Paul meant ‘callus’, this need not carry the negative valence that ‘harden’ does.28 Instead, it would offer a more positive and arguably more salient choice that has to do with the healing and protecting process that takes place after an injury has occurred, such as after a branch has been broken or broken off.29 The translation ‘that a callus has happened to Israel’ expresses the perfect active verb ge/gonen (‘has become’) here. It allows the dative ‘to’ or ‘for Israel’ to be expressed. If discussing a callus in English, we would express this as ‘has developed’ or ‘has formed’: ‘that a callus has developed/formed for Israel’.30 Either way, this also communicates the idea that the callus ‘has happened’ for the benefit of some Israelites or Israel. (Of course, even the translation ‘callus’ contains a value judgement that is at the very least patronizing, for Paul believes that his fellow Jews not joining him in declaring Christ to the nations have suffered a wound that elicits the need for this protective measure; but at the same time his point is that this is a part of the way God is working, using them, so that these Israelites are still a part of the way God is announcing the message to the nations.) That Paul was describing a protective and healing callus rather than the idea of hardness as in stubborn, insensitive, or obdurate, is enhanced by attending to the manuscript variants for pw/ rwsiv. Phro/ w and ph/rwsiv are regular variants for pwro/w and pw/ rwsiv in the NT and other manuscripts. In their TDNT essay on the topic, the Schmidts conclude that switching between these terms was so common that it is not possible to determine the original, ‘the most one may deduce from it is that there was no longer any awareness of the difference in meaning between the two stems pwr- and phr-’.31 Although ph/rwsiv is not listed as a variant among Greek manuscripts for Romans 11.2532, Nestle-Aland25 does list the Latin variant caecitus

28. Theophrastus uses sklhro/ v and cognates to describe the hard state of plants and trees and their various components, or parts derived from them, like wood (Hist. plant. 5.3.1). 29. Although interpreters do not develop this language in metaphorical terms here, or translate pw/rwsiv as callus, when the translation callus is discussed the negative aspects have generally been emphasized, e.g., that they are hardened and insensitive areas; cf. Robinson, Ephesians, p. 264. 30. Louw and Nida, Lexicon, 13.80; 13.107. 31. Schmidt and Schmidt, TDNT 5.1027–28; cf. Robinson, Ephesians, pp. 264–74. Theophrastus used phro/w and ph/rwsiv, and cognates, to refer to the process of maiming or injuring trees or parts of trees, to their being thereafter maimed, wounded, harmed, injured, mutilated, disabled, or incapacitated (Hist. plant. 1.8.4; 2.4.3; 4.14.8; Caus. plant. 1.5.5). The variant pur- is attested for Hist. plant. 1.8.4 in U M Mon. gr; S. Amigues (ed., trans.), Théophraste. Recherches sur les Plantes. Tome I. Livres I–III (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1988), p. 24. 32. Cf. Reuben Swanson (ed.), New Testament Greek Manuscripts: Variant Readings Arranged in Horizontal Lines Against Codex Vaticanus: Romans (Wheaton and Pasadena: Tyndale House Publishers and William Carey International University Press, 2001), p. 181.

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(blindness/dullness) in latt,33 and syP also uses ‘blindness/dullness’ ((wyrwt),34 which may indicate that these scribes worked from a Greek manuscript with pw/ rwsiv, or that the two were used interchangeably. J. A. Robinson lists the translation choices in Latin as obtusio (dull/blunt/obtuse/blind) for Ambrosiaster and Hilary, and caecitas (obscure/blind) for clar, vg, Ambrosiaster, and Augustine.35 This variant tradition apparently accounts for Luther’s German translation choice of ‘blindness’ (Blindheit).36 Also, for the earlier use of the verb e0pwrw/qhsan in v. 7, Swanson lists the variant e0perw/ qhsan in the fifth-century Uncial C.37 Swanson also provides many Greek variants with an omicron rather than omega for the second letter, and a double rr in some cases, that is, with po/rwsiv (including the case of P46) and po/rrwsiv in v. 25, and e0porw/ qhsan, e0porrw/ qhsan, and e0porro/qhsan in v. 7.38 These anomalies raise an interesting question when combined with the many cases of manuscript variation discussed in other NT texts by the Schmidts: why the consistent inconsistency in these vowels? In the case of the switching between the omicron and omega in the second-letter position, the specialists surmise that this is due to the similar ‘o’ sound of these vowels in pw/ rwsiv and po/rwsiv. But it may be that this anomaly bears witness to the earlier usage of ph//rwsiv in manuscripts no longer available to us. There is some reason to suppose that Paul may have been using cognates of ph/rwsiv, especially in 11.7, based on the kinds of disabilities that are described in the passages he cites from Isa. 29.10 combined with some turns of phrase from Deut. 29.3 in v. 8, and Ps. 69.2223 (LXX 68.22-23) in vv. 9-10, although neither pw/ rwsiv nor ph/rwsiv are used in these texts.39 Ph/rwsiv and phro/w can denote being ‘wounded’, ‘maimed’, or ‘impaired’ in some way, or being ‘blinded’ (although cognates of tuflo/ v are used specifically for blindness, rather than merely obscured vision or generally damaged organs, including eyes). The only place where pwro/w is found 33. Caecita¯s and cognates not only refer to dullness/dimness of judgement, or making/ being obscure, but also, interestingly, are used to refer to the removal of the eyes or buds from plants (P. G. W. Glare, Oxford Latin Dictionary, 1996). 34. Schmidt and Schmidt, TDNT 5.1027. I am grateful to D. Stramara for help with the Syriac variant for 11.25, which uses a verb and also introduces the heart (also added to v. 7). Lamsa’s translation of the clause in v. 25 does not reflect the verbal change; it reads: ‘for blindness of heart has to some degree befallen Israel’ (G. M. Lamsa, Holy Bible from the Ancient Eastern Text: George M. Lamsa’s Translations from the Aramaic of the Peshitta (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 1132. Lamsa translates the verbal usage in v. 7 in a way that brings out the alternative aspect of dullness or darkness: ‘were dulled in their minds’ (p. 1131; see also J. Payne Smith, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary, p. 407). 35. Robinson, Ephesians, pp. 267–69. 36. Schmidt and Schmidt, TDNT 5.1023, 1027. 37. Swanson, New Testament Greek Manuscripts, p. 170. 38. Swanson, New Testament Greek Manuscripts, pp. 170, 181. 39. Paul did not include the first part of Deut. 29.3, which refers to the heart, in his citation.



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in the Septuagint, Job 17.7 (pepw/ rwntai ga_r a)po_ o)rgh=v oi( o f ) qalmoi/ mou), bears witness to a similar manuscript variation between pwro/w and phro/w. This case refers to the eyes being disabled, but the eyes are not being callused; rather, vision is being impaired, as the manuscript variants from Codex Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, among others, indicate by using peph/rwntai, and in other manuscripts by the use of h)maurwqhsan (mauro/w: to darken, dim, make obscure).40 The Test. Levi 13.7 uses ph/rwsiv in combination with tu/flwsiv: ei ) mh_ tu/flwsiv a)sebei/av kai _ ph/rwsiv a(marti/av; ‘except the blindness of impiety and the impairment of sin’.41 This may well be a play on the synonymous usage of ph/rwsiv for effect; that is, it is a disability, an injury that inhibits proper function similar to what blindness (or better, ‘nearsightedness’, since applied to impiety here) represents in terms of vision. The meaning ‘blindness of sin’ misses the move between these two descriptive choices; the distinction as well as overlap between being impaired in the eyes and being similarly incapacitated elsewhere is at play. Cognates of ph/rwsiv are found regularly in Philo (50+ times), but pw/ rwsiv does not appear to be used at all.42 Ph/rwsiv and cognates are translated throughout as impaired, disabled, or deprived, and refer to many different parts of the body (Spec. Laws 1.341). When ph/rwsiv is used with reference to the eyes or vision it describes a more general disability that can include the specific case of tuflo/ v (e.g., Heir 76; Moses 1.124; Virtues 7). In Alleg. Interp. 3.91, impaired is combined with blinded to describe the inferiority of recollection to memory (phro_n kai _ tuflo_n pra= gma); they are similar in valence here, but different qualities (cf. 3.231).43 In Flight 121, Lot’s wife’s looking back is described as e0phrw/ qhsan, which would not refer to being blind exactly, but to being near-sighted. Good Person 55 refers to the failure to perceive the depths of the soul’s suffering due to impaired reason (logismou= ph/rwsin; cf. Providence 2.20 [dia/noian]). This brings up the case of 2 Cor. 3.14, where Paul states that ‘their thoughts (in the sense of what they perceived) [ta_ noh/mata au0tw/ n] were callused [e0pwrw/ qh],’ which seems to indicate that they were ‘obstructed’. This is said to correspond to a ‘veil [ka/ lumma] laid over their hearts’ in v. 15. The dynamic turns around perception or seeing, and this would suggest ph/rwsiv rather than pw/ rwsiv, 40. A. Rahlfs (ed.), Septuaginta (Stuttgart: Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 5th edn, 1952), p. 299, lists ASs+; Robinson, Ephesians, p. 265, lists )c a A, and refers to the cases of h)maurwqhsan. 41. Note that the context is the gaining of wisdom in the fear of God by the wise, which can protect them against all manner of loss, and cannot be taken away from them except when wisdom is coupled with impiety or sin. 42. No entries for pw/rwsiv as a variant are listed in P. Borgen, K. Fuglseth and R. Skarsten (eds), The Philo Index: A Complete Greek Word Index to the Writings of Philo of Alexandria (Leiden: Brill, 2000). 43. In Cherubim 58, a mind that is blind (tuglo& v) is compared and contrasted to being deprived (phrwqe/nta) of the external sight by the eyes. Sacr. 69, does refer to ‘the eyes/vision of the soul being maimed [ta_ yuxh=v o1mmata pephrwme/nov]’ (cf. Worse 22; Posterity 8; Unchangeable 93; Spec. Laws 3.6; Contempl. Life 10).

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or that pw/ rwsiv can have a sense not so much of hardening, which does not describe sight or perception, but of covering up or obstructing the view of sight, understanding, perception, or thoughts; hence, covered by a callus. Moreover, Robinson shows that the early translators and commentators understood this in the sense of obstructed or blinded, and he concludes that this application of pw/ rwsiv for the faculty of understanding is unparalleled if translated hardened.44 Likewise, pw/ rwsiv is not used by Josephus, but he does use cognates of ph/rwsiv several times.45 In Ant. 1.267, ph/rwsiv refers to Isaac’s deficient eyesight when addressing Esau; in Gen. 27.1, his eyes are described as ‘dim’ or ‘dull’ (a)mblu/ nw), but Isaac is not exactly blind. The general sense of maiming of any part of a person is evident in Ant. 4.280, when discussing the Lex talionis (Exod. 21.24; Lev. 24.19), and War 5.228, where it refers to any bodily defect on a priest, while in Ag. Ap. 2.15, pephrwme/nouv is used for those who have been maimed in contrast to the blind (tuflou&v) and leprous who came out of Egypt. These cases suggest that interpreters unnecessarily refer to blindness rather than to impairment in a more general sense, for dim sight bespeaks impaired vision, lack of clarity, sometimes lack of far-sightedness as in myopic, but not exactly blindness.46 The passages Paul cites in Rom 11.8-10 do not refer simply to the eyes – although ‘eyes’ provides the gezerah shawah linking his proof-texts – but they also refer to sluggish spirits, ears that do not hear, and backs that are bent, in addition to describing a temporary state of obscured vision rather than a permanent state indicated by blindness. Since phro/ w would make sense of this state if translated ‘injured’ or ‘wounded’ or ‘disabled’, it may be suggested that Paul probably meant if not used phro/ w rather than pwro/w in v. 7 (cf. Philo, Flight 123; Spec. Laws 1.117). Since this cannot be proven, it can at least be suggested that the better translation of pwro/ w here is in the sense of a temporary state likened to a protective callus that forms after an injury, rather than to a hardening in the sense of insensitivity, or stubbornness, or related to the heart, or alternatively, to blindness or obtuseness. In the case of 11.25, the likelihood of ph/rwsiv originally written or intended rather than pw/ rwsiv is neither as easy to infer, nor is it preferable. The proof-texts from Isa. 59.20-21 and 27.9 do not suggest impairment any more than they suggest hardening; however, their metaphorical use of 44. Robinson, Ephesians, pp. 265, 267; cf. M. J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 2005), p. 301: ‘the Israelites of Moses’ day had calloused hearts that were insensitive to spiritual stimuli’. 45. No variants or cases of pw/rwsiv are listed in K. H. Rengstorf (ed.), A Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus (study edn; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2002). 46. Jerome’s translation of Job 17:7 is ‘obscurati’ (obscured, darkened) from the Hexaplar, and ‘caligauit’ (misty, darkened) from the Hebrew (Robinson, Ephesians, p. 265, n. 1), so also not ‘blinded’ per se, but obscured.



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plant language throughout supports the notion of callusing. Assuming that Paul was using this language metaphorically, it does follow that if there is a callus, there was an injury in need of such protection at the point of the wound until healed, i.e., saved, rescued, or restored. If Paul meant ‘that an injury (or a wound) has happened to/for Israel’, the focus would be on the process of divine discipline, of the sustaining of an injury that is evident presently; it is not an indication of destruction, but of a temporary stage that makes necessary the future rescuing of the plant. If he meant ‘that a callus has developed for Israel’, the focus would be on the process of being divinely protected after an injury has occurred, but all the more emphasizing that this development highlights a temporary stage in order to facilitate a healthy outcome; indeed, full recuperation according to God’s design. That is consistent with the language of the texts from Isaiah in their contexts. This association between the variant ‘injury/wound/impairment’ and the translation suggestion ‘callus’ works together; both keep the metaphorical quality of the language in view in a way that the usual translations ‘hard’, ‘stubborn’, ‘obdurate’, ‘insensitive’, ‘obtuse’ and ‘blind’ do not communicate, even, ironically, ‘obstruct’.47 Indeed, the suggested translations provide a positive and sympathetic instead of a judgemental – dare I suggest ‘insensitive’ – valence to the images evoked. 3.2 The issue of translating a0po_ me/rouv Another translation and interpretation issue arises with Paul’s usage of a0po_ me/rouv in v. 25. As already discussed, this is usually translated either to refer to ‘part’ of Israel, or Israel ‘partially’. The latter can imply that it refers to all Israelites, but it need not, for it can refer to Israel in general because of the state of some Israelites, and thus in effect visualize the same idea as ‘part of Israel’ translations (if ‘part’ of the branches in a tree are callused or injured, ‘part’ of the tree can also be described as callused or injured, or the tree ‘in part’, or ‘partially’, although this would still not indicate that all the branches are callused or hardened).48 While the placement of the prepositional phrase after ‘callus’ could indicate a partial callus, that Paul

47. I am thus in agreement with Robinson’s conclusion that pw/rwsiv is not best translated ‘hardened’, but in disagreement that it should be rendered ‘blinded’, for it is not indicating that kind of permanent and completely damaged state, but an injury if pertaining to the eyes would better be translated in terms of obstructed vision, unable to see clearly, ‘partially blinded’, ‘obstructed’, ‘obscured’, ‘blocked’, ‘clouded’, ‘darkened’, ‘dimmed’. 48. Jewett, Romans, pp. 699–700, argues against taking this to apply to Israel as a whole, which was the position I maintained in Mystery of Romans, pp. 263–64; idem, ‘“Broken Branches”’, but I now recognize how it could apply to Israel without meaning it applies to all Israelites, a distinction that keeping the tree metaphor in view in vv. 25-27 helps to visualize.

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seeks to describe a partial callus rather than a full callus seems unlikely: a callus forms, or does not.49 There are several other alternatives to explore. Although rarely observed, this prepositional phrase can be translated ‘sort of’,50 thereby signalling the metaphorical limitations of the image invoked: ‘that a callus, sort of, has happened to Israel …’ The translation, ‘… in part’, can be maintained, and refers to a process which ‘in part’ consists of what is happening preliminarily in the service of a larger purpose or later goal; hence, part of the reason that a callus has formed for Israel is because of the function it serves until the fullness of the nations commences: ‘that a callus, in part (for a particular purpose), has formed for Israel, until …’ In addition to ‘in part’, this sense can be communicated if translated ‘somewhat’ or ‘to some degree’;51 that is, this has happened specifically in the service of the next development, or particularly until the next stage of the process has been reached. The translation could read, ‘that a callus, to some degree, has formed for Israel, until …’ Another option arises from the fact that Paul seeks to describe a temporary state in the next clause, which is framed in time-sequential terms as ‘until … begins’.52 A translation capturing the partial time element would be true to the adverbial aspect normally indicated when this phrase is used, which some have argued is the grammatically proper way to read a0po_ me/rouv here, so that this ‘has happened partially’ to Israel.53 As already noted, when it 49. One could discuss specific stages in the process of callus development, but this does not appear to be the topic. 50. K. Stendahl, Final Account: Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), p. 38. 51. Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon, p. 401. Chrysostom translated this as ‘in part’, and the grammatical example he provides from 2 Cor. 2.5 indicates a development partially applied to a group, but he nevertheless interprets it to indicate part of Israel: ‘But his meaning is nearly this, and he had said it before, that the unbelief is not universal, but only “in part” … it is not the whole people …’ (‘Homily 19’, Romans, trans. J. B. Morris). 52. Sanday and Headlam, Romans, p. 335, note that the point is to indicate ‘that it is only temporary and that the limitation in time is “until …”’ 53. C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (2 vols; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 2.575, insists that it is adverbial, yet he concludes that it is ‘not all Jews’ who are thereby indicated, which is however the same conclusion one would reach from taking this to be adjectival; moreover, an adverbial usage can indicate that it has happened partially to Israel, i. e., to all Jews, which Cranfield argues against. Although C. K. Barrett recognizes the phrase could be adverbial, he decides that it is used adjectivally here, and concludes, like Cranfield, ironically, that it is ‘partial in the sense that it was only a part (though the larger part) of Israel that was hardened’ (The Epistle to the Romans [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, rev. edn, 1991], p. 206). J. D. G. Dunn, Romans 9–16 (WBC 38b; Dallas: Word Books, 1988), p. 691, includes time, purpose and people: ‘The blindness is partial as both temporary and as afflicting what Paul hopes will in the end be a relatively small proportion of his people … The harshness … against Israel is ameliorated by the setting of a time limit … is limited to a specific purpose and period.’ J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1993), p. 621, observes that it is only part of Israel that is hardened, but includes that this hardening is ‘also temporary’. Although Jewett argues against adverbial application to indicate hardening has happened partially to Israel as a whole, and against



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is recognized that Paul is dealing in plant metaphors, and something that happens to part of the tree also affects the whole tree partially as well, there is no reason to object to this translation on the basis that it is only some Israelites whom Paul appears to be describing as callused; however, there is another way to construe the message of this prepositional phrase that I have not seen explored. One can translate a0po_ me/rouv to highlight the time element of what is happening: it ‘has happened for a while’. Louw and Nida discuss how a)po_ me/rouv can refer ‘to a relatively short period of time, with emphasis upon the temporary nature of the event or state – not long, temporary, for a little while, for a while’.54 In Rom. 15.24, Paul writes of the fact that he will stay in Rome ‘for a while [a)po_ me/rouv]’ before he heads off to Spain. Thus, the phrase can be translated, ‘that a callus has formed for Israel for a while, until … begins’, or, ‘that a temporary callus has formed for Israel, until … begins’, or, ‘that a callus has formed for Israel temporarily, until … begins’, or, in keeping with Paul’s word order, ‘that a callus temporarily has formed for Israel’.55 These choices are fully compatible with the focus on a part of a process discussed immediately above, ‘for a while’ emphasizes the time element over the developmental aspect. Both aspects are expressed by the adjective ‘temporary’, or the adverb, ‘temporarily’. One of the strengths of developing the temporary time element in the translation is that it keeps the focus on Paul communicating a stage in a development that will come to a conclusion that may not be apparent to his audience at the time, which is the thrust of his argument throughout the larger sentence as well as the chapter overall. Another benefit is that it parallels the message of the proof-text Paul creates in vv. 26-27 to substantiate the mystery he seeks to disclose, which does not refer to part of Israel or Israel partially, but to a temporary stage in Israel’s history, according to God’s promise, when it will be delivered from ungodliness and sins. In the argument following these citations from Isaiah, Paul explains that while some Israelites are presently alienated, they are nevertheless beloved, and that at the end of this period they will be persuaded of Paul’s message and join together with those from the rest of the nations similarly persuaded, Israel and the other nations together glorifying God for the receipt of mercy. I thus propose that Paul’s effort to disclose this mystery as the present state of things for a while, as a partial and preliminary stage in a larger process that includes several stages leading to a previously unforeseen outcome, is visualized most usefully by the translation ‘temporarily’.

it meaning that the hardening itself is partial, but rather that it signifies that only part of Israel is experiencing this, he also implicitly recognizes the temporariness of this stage when he discusses the next phrase, for he understands ‘Israel’s obtuseness lasting until the fulfilment of the predestined plan for Gentile conversion’ (Romans, p. 700). 54. Lexicon, 67.109. 55. This time-element-oriented alternative works just as well if ‘injury’ was indicated instead of ‘callus’.

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3.3 Paul’s message Paul metaphorically describes an anomalous development in Rome that he does not want to be misunderstood. In Paul’s view, his audience is witnessing a time when Israelites are divided in their response to the gospel message and thus some – a select few, such as Paul sees himself – are taking up the responsibility to proclaim this news to the nations, while others – indeed, the majority – are not.56 This development is temporary, and Israel will be preserved throughout it. In due time, when the messengers such as Paul have turned fully to bringing this message to the nations; ‘in this way’ or ‘then’, those of his fellow Israelites who have not recognized yet that the age to come time has arrived – that it was thus time for bringing the message of good to those of the nations who will turn to the worship of the one God of Israel as the only God of all humankind (when ‘the fullness of the nations should commence’) – will join him in this task. It has always been Israel’s special privilege to bring the ‘words of God’ to the nations (cf. 3.2); from Paul’s vantage point, that time has arrived. The purpose of describing this stage is to communicate a mystery to his non-Israelite audience about which they lack a proper understanding, for the Roman communities addressed have not experienced the way that Paul’s ministry to the nations unfolds specifically in the context of his ministry to his fellow Israelites, and thus they fail to perceive how their destinies are inextricably combined. He cannot get to Rome yet, so he must write to explain that things are not as they may myopically appear to them to be: these members of Israel are not God’s enemies, or theirs, but rather are suffering vicariously on the audience’s behalf, however counterintuitive that may seem. ‘Therefore’, in the chapters that follow (12–16), Paul instructs these non-Jews to regard these fellow members of Abraham’s family with compassion instead of judgementalism, and to seek to support them through this vulnerable time instead of insensitively dismissing them and their opinions, even though they do not share affiliation in Christ-faithfulness. They are to live righteously, which includes the demonstration of respect for Israelite covenant norms, for thereby they will avoid giving that push that might cause those stumbling to completely fall. In due time, upon Paul’s arrival in Rome, and thus after the Jews there have the opportunity to witness Paul’s success in bringing these members of the nations from idolatry and sin to the one God and righteousness through faithfulness to God in Christ, Paul predicts that his fellow Israelites will join him in turning fully to proclaim to the nations this message of the dawning of the long-awaited age of shalom. In other words, all Israel will be restored to her special task of proclaiming God’s words of good news for and to the nations.57 56. I have described this interpretation of Paul’s message and ministry in detail in Mystery of Romans, pp. 239–88. 57. I discuss the implications of this interpretation, and thus that history did not unfold as I understand Paul to have imagined that it would, as well as the hermeneutical



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4. Concluding Translation of vv. 7, 25-26 The translation and interpretation of the aorist passive form pwro/w in 11.7 as ‘the rest were callused’, is not as well suited to the context as would be ‘the rest were wounded/disabled’, which implies that if pwro/w is original it could already be used in the direction of phro/ w. The allegory with broken branches and thus the protective need for a callus has not been introduced by v. 7; therefore, the reader is not prepared to infer the metaphorical quality of forming a protective callus, at least on the first reading. The message communicated in the proof-texts from Isaiah and the Psalms that Paul provides in vv. 8-10 speaks of a temporary period of time when God inflicts on some people spirits that are not alert (i.e., that slumber), eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear, and backs that are bent, in other words, a time of disability (not unlike the disabling he wants his audience to avoid allowing to develop among themselves through arrogant indifference to the plight of these Israelites!). In English, ‘the rest were hardened’ does not successfully communicate temporariness; likewise, neither does ‘blinded’. The negative valence of these choices does not signal that Paul is driving toward a favourable conclusion highlighting the eventual restoration of these Israelites. Furthermore, it fails to convey the generous spirit that one might expect to accompany Paul’s earnest plea for his audience to live graciously toward these Israelites during this stage in God’s design, just as these members from the other nations stand only because of the grace they have received and embraced. The choice of the noun pw/ rwsiv in 11.25, however, is warranted contextually, and can carry a positive meaning when translated metaphorically as ‘callus’. Its potential for communicating in generous terms is enhanced when this language is understood to allude to the olive tree allegory it follows, combined with the metaphorical turns of phrase throughout vv. 25-27, which employ tree metaphors of ‘fullness’ and ‘restoration’, and reflect the metaphorical context of the passages in Isaiah from which Paul quotes. When approached in metaphorical plant terms, the translation ‘callus’ need not be understood in the sense of hardness or blindness, or be interpreted to signify insensitivity, or obduracy, or stubbornness toward God. Rather, the development of a callus envisages a protected state after the sustaining of an injury, and is thus intimately related to ph/rwsiv, the disability itself. The forming of a callus is a positive development undertaken by the tree to sustain the health of the injured part as well as the health of the overall plant, which is naturally affected by an injury to any part of it. Thus, opportunities that nevertheless arise from Paul’s argument and doxology in vv. 33-36, in M. D. Nanos, ‘Challenging the Limits that Continue to Define Paul’s Perspective on Jews and Judaism’, in Grenholm and Patte (eds), Reading Israel in Romans, pp. 217–29. Notably, this essay was developed in dialogue with the views W. S. Campbell expressed in ‘Divergent Images of Paul and His Mission’, Reading Israel in Romans, Grenholm and Patte (eds), pp. 187–211.

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Paul may well be reaching back to the language introduced in vv. 7-10, but moving now to the next stage in the process, that of the protected state of the wounded part of Israel – until the final healing can be completed. The larger clause as well as the suggested translation of a0po_ me/rouv as ‘temporarily’ can emphasize the preliminary stage of protecting the injured area ‘until’ the beginning of the next phase, when the grafted wild branch representing the nations is introduced, which must take hold ‘fully’ to succeed, i.e., ‘come in’ or ‘commence’. That requires a healthy tree able to provide nourishment in a time of stress, if not yet a tree in which all of the natural branches have been restored to full health. I therefore propose a translation that retains the character of metaphor drawing on an image of a tree following damage, such as would be the case for some broken branches in the allegory it follows: that a callus temporarily has formed for (to protect) Israel. This allegory also included the introduction of a wild shoot in need of recognizing its need ‘to take proper root’ after being grafted among these branches, which includes its place among both the healthy ones and those presently undergoing the process of becoming callused to sustain life in their damaged condition. The tree Paul envisions includes not only all Israel, but also members from all of the nations alongside of the children of Jacob, all of God’s created order coming into harmony, however different, as one people of God (cf. 15.5-13). Hence, I suggest a translation of vv. 25-26 (with expanded explanations) in this direction: For I do not want you to be unperceptive regarding this mystery (of the unexpected interdependence of the promised future for all Israelites with the beginning of the successful inclusion of those from the other nations among the people of God), brothers and sisters, so that you would not be mindful (only) for yourselves (as members from the other nations experiencing grace, and not graciously concerned about the welfare of those Israelites who do not share your convictions about the gospel), that a callus temporarily has formed for Israel, (to protect Israel) until (the time) when the fullness of the nations should commence (the successful introduction of a grafted shoot representing the nations, or the blossoming of that grafted shoot, representing when Paul turns fully to declaring the gospel to the nations following the divided response it receives when first proclaimed to his fellow Israelites), (26)and in this way (or: and then)58 all Israel will be restored (that is, following the beginning of the positive response by some from the nations, witnessed by their turning from idolatry and sin to the one God and righteousness, Israel will be restored to full (25)

58. The issue of whether Paul’s usage is modal (‘in this way’) or temporal (‘then’) cannot be resolved lexically. The interpreter must choose based on other contextual elements, the interpretation of which are of course also a matter of dispute. P. W. van der Horst, ‘“Only Then Will All Israel Be Saved”: A Short Note on the Meaning of kai\ ou3tov in Romans 11:26’, JBL 119 (2000), pp. 521–25, has made the case for the temporal, noting that the two options are not mutually exclusive (p. 524), although the prevailing opinion is toward the modal, from which I argued in Mystery of Romans (cf. Jewett, Romans, p. 701); either one of these can express the interpretation proposed herein.



‘Callused’, Not ‘Hardened’ health instead of its divided state, for the production of abundant fruit from among the nations in response to Paul’s declaration of the message to them triggers a process by which those Israelites not yet persuaded of the gospel will recognize what time it is, the awaited time to join Paul in proclaiming the good news to the rest of the nations), just as it was written (i.e., promised) …

The suggested literal translation is: For I do not want you to be unperceptive regarding this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you would not be mindful (only) for yourselves, that a callus temporarily has formed for Israel, until (the time) when the fullness of the nations should commence, (26) and in this way (or: and then) all Israel will be restored, just as it was written … (25)

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Chapter 5

Another Reason for Romans – A Pastoral Response to Augustan Imperial Theology: Paul’s Use of the Song of Moses in Romans 9–11 and 14–15 Ian E. Rock Exegesis of Paul’s letter to the Romans has found widespread agreement in that Acts 18.2-3 and Suetonius, Claudius, 25.41 are indispensable in establishing the letter’s historical contingency. For the most part, exegetes tend to derive and follow the interpretatio Christiani from these sources. The premise for interpretation is to presuppose that Suetonius meant ‘Christus’ when he wrote ‘Chrestus’. The consequence of this approach is to conveniently displace Roman imperial policy and political domination from exegesis of the letter, and to locate the dissension that supposedly gave rise to the Claudian edict as a theological conflict between Jews and Christians while ignoring the substantial evidence that the addressees of this letter are not Christians but rather the saints in Rome (Rom. 1.7). The result is a tendency to read this letter with the anti-Jewish polemic that is evident in the work of Augustine and Luther. This interpretation seems to have gained popularity when read in conjunction with the fifth-century historian Paulus Orosius who wrote: Josephus reports, ‘In his ninth year the Jews were expelled by Claudius from the city.’ But Suetonius, who speaks as follows, influences me more: ‘Claudius expelled from Rome the Jews constantly rioting at the instigation of Christ [Christo].’ As far as whether he had commanded that the Jews rioting against Christ [Christum] be restrained and checked or also had wanted the Christians as persons of a cognate religion to be expelled, is not at all to be discerned …2

Arnaldo Momigliano would later assert the primacy of the interpretatio Christiani when he wrote: 1. Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit. Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome. 2. Historiarum, 7.6.15-16.



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Though it may be thought mistaken, Suetonius’ reference to ‘Chrestus’, Christ, is natural enough. Those who deny that the ‘Chrestus’ of Suetonius is the Christ must undertake the onus of proving their view: the identification is undoubtedly more reasonable, and therefore more probable than any other solution, and in fact no serious argument has yet been brought against it.3

While in the minority, there is sufficient reason to believe that either Chrestus may have been an impulsor to Claudius given the evidence that powerful freedmen influenced Claudius’ decisions in the same way that previous emperors retained such advisers,4 or that Claudius’ action may have been evidence of Julio-Claudian hostility against the practice of Judaism in Rome, Jews living there being considered as foreigners. In fact, once it is recognized that the Claudian edict could have been a result of the implementation of Roman imperial policy, exclusive reliance on the interpretatio Christiani must be questioned. First, supporting evidence to move beyond this single exegetical point is provided by the Roman historian Cassius Dio, who states that Claudius had taken action early in his imperium to curb the activity of Jews in Rome.5 Second, Acts 18.2-4 establishes a historical reference when mention is made of Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia (Acts 18.12), but this evidence does not reconcile to Paulus Orosius’ emphatic albeit apologetic claim that the Jews were expelled from Rome in the ninth year of Claudius’ reign. Third, the harmonization of Suetonius, Claudius, 25.4 and Acts 18.2 is particularly problematic. While the latter states that Aquila and Priscilla were Jews, there is insufficient evidence to suggest that they were Christians. The most we can deduce from Acts 18.3 is that Paul, Aquila and Priscilla were of the same trade collegium, being tentmakers. It is highly possible that they became Christians after their encounter with Paul, thus earning the title fellow workers (sunergo/ v). Fourth, when one reads the wider context of Suetonius, Claudius, 25.4-5, not only Jews but five other groups were affected by Claudius’ policies – that is, Lycians, Rhodians, Trojans, Germans and the Druids – thus it is possible that this action was taken by Claudius deliberately to strengthen Roman dominance, preserve the Roman cult, and ensure Roman imperial rule.6 And this seems to be supported by a fifth historical fact: Claudius’ instructions that C. Iulius Polybius translate Virgil’s Aeneid into Greek prose for use in the Greek-speaking cities of the empire, 3. A. Momigliano, Claudius: The Emperor and His Achievement (trans. W. D. Hogarth; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), pp. 32–33. 4. H. Dixon Slingerland, Claudian Policymaking and the Early Imperial Repression of Judaism at Rome (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, University of South Florida, 1997), pp. 219–41, esp. 232. cf. Tacitus, Annals, 13.4; Tacitus, Annals, 12.1; 13.14.1, cf. Dio, 60.19.2. F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World: 31BC–AD337 (London: Duckworth, 1977), pp. 70–73; Tacitus, Annals, 15.35. 5. Dio 60.6.6 (7). 6. H. H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B. C. to A. D. 68 (London: University Paperbacks, 1963), pp. 300–02 for Claudius’ relationship with the senate. See idem, pp. 302–06 for his administrative policies, and idem, pp. 307–08 for his emulation of Augustus.

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namely, Corinth, Ephesus, Antioch and Alexandria.7 Sixth, it was known that Claudius sought a divine relationship with the divine Augustus through the deification of his grandmother Livia, now the goddess Julia Augusta, thus earning for himself the title ‘son of god’.8 Claudius’ edict most likely was an attempt to protect the religio of Rome from foreign superstitiones which had become potential threats to Rome’s well-being and integrity.9 It was what was expected of him in his role as Pontifex Maximus10 and emperor, as his predecessors had already taken similar action.11 As Gruen notes: ‘Claudius presented himself as a guardian of ancient rituals.’12 What is also of significance is that the most critical of his actions were taken around ad 49, and these signalled Claudius’ intention to continue with the political, military and religious policies of Augustus as enunciated in the Aeneid. What then was the ideological and theological underpinning of those policies? The Aeneid has been described as Rome’s sacred history.13 The literary hero of the story is Aeneas, who is but the prototype of Emperor Augustus. Simply stated, it provided a mythological justification, indeed the key, 7. Seneca, Consolatio ad Polybium, 11.5; cf. 8.2 and 11.6. 8. Suetonius, Claudius, 11.2; cf. 3.2, Dio 60.5.2, Seneca, Apoc., 9.5. 9. M. Beard, J. A. North and S. R. F. Price, Religions of Rome: A History, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 228–44. For the action of patrolling Rome’s religio see ch. 5 of Beard, Religions, Vol. 1, and especially the definition of superstitio in idem, pp. 214–27. 10. R. Gordon, ‘The Veil of Power’, in R. A. Horsley (ed.), Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997), pp. 126–39, argues that ‘the sacrificial or “priestly” role of the princeps’ cannot be separated ‘from his role as benefactor or euergete on a massive scale’, and combined, ‘these roles … provided a model for the elite … in Rome and in the provinces’, p. 126. Gordon suggests that maintenance and reconciliation of the differences between the ‘religion of Rome’ and the ‘religion of the Roman Empire’, that is the provinces, was made possible through the use of sacrificial images on coins, and metaphorical use of language of the body particularly of the emperor as head and the empire as body, as well as the sacrificial activity of the emperor as exemplar, created the solidarity and unity of the empire even though the administrative centre was comparatively small. In this way, Roman religion became the tool by which social order within the empire was ordered, pp. 127–29. At Rome, ‘one of the roles of the princeps as Pontifex Maximus was to safeguard the integrity and continuity of the traditional public rituals’, p. 127. In Luke 22.25-27 Jesus rejects the model of leadership exercised by those in authority, who are called benefactors (eu0erge/tai). In Acts 10.38, Jesus’ actions are described as ‘doing good’ (eu0rgetw= n). In Diotogenes, On Kingship, frg. 1.2.1, euergete¯s is a function of the king as judge. B. Blumenfeld, The Political Paul: Justice, Democracy and Kingship in a Hellenistic Framework (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), p. 240. 11. See Braund 720 = EJ 357 = ILS 8393.30-31; Augustine’s, The City of God 6.1011 = Seneca, On Superstition frr. 35-7, Haase; CSEL 39.298. Beard, Religions, Vol. 1, pp. 217–19. 12. E. S. Gruen, Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 39. 13. M. Palmer Bonz, The Past as Legacy: Luke-Acts and Ancient Epic (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), pp. 31–60.



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of the Roman Empire and all of its policies. It was the cornerstone of Roman imperial ideology and the foundation from which Augustus and the emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty legitimized their rule.14 It was a story with which the Roman people readily identified; it was ‘a history of god and his activity directed toward the salvation of his chosen people’,15 for the Roman god Jupiter had articulated Rome’s universal dominance in the first prophetic utterance of the Aeneid: 1.275 Romulus, then … … shall succeed to power and found the city Of Mars and with his own name endow the Roman nation. 1.278 To these I set no bounds, either in space or time; Unlimited power I give them … 1.282 The cause of the Romans, the lords of creation, the togaed people …16 1.286 … there shall be born a Caesar … … whose empire Shall reach to the ocean’s limits, whose fame shall end in the stars. … one day cares ended, you shall 1.290 Receive him into heaven; him also will mortals pray to.17 Then shall the age of violence be mellowing into peace: Venerable Faith, and the Home, with Romulus and Remus, Shall make the laws; the grim, steel-welded gates of War 1.294 Be locked.18

In another prophecy, Augustus is the one chosen by Jupiter to usher in the golden age from which his empire shall extend: 6.791 And here, here is the man, the promised one you know of – Caesar Augustus, son of a god, destined to rule Where Saturn ruled of old in Latium, and there Bring back the age of gold: his empire shall expand 6.795 Past Garamants and Indians to a land beyond zodiac.19

14. See P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (trans. A. Shapiro; Jerome Lecture 16, 1988; reprinted, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), pp. 192–95. D. Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic from Virgil to Milton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 7–10. 15. See D. C. Duling, N. Perrin and R. L. Ferm, The New Testament: Proclamation and Paraenesis, Myth and History, 3rd edn (Fort Worth/New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1994), p. 358; Quint, Epic, p. 62. 16. Cf. Suetonius, Augustus 40.5; Virgil, Aeneid 1.282. 17. C. Day Lewis, trans., Virgil: The Aeneid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952, 1966, 1986, 1998), p. 404, states this is Augustus, cf. also Aeneid 6.789–794. See ‘Appendix A: The Aeneid and Its Critical Interpreters’, in Bonz, The Past, pp. 195–202; and, S. J. Harrison, ‘Aeneid 1.286: Julius Caesar or Augustus’, in F. Cairns and M. Heath (eds), Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar (Leeds: University of Leeds, 1996), pp. 128–33. 18. The gates of the temple of Janus were opened in time of war, and closed during times of peace, ibid., p. 404. 19. Aeneid 6.791–96, cf. Eclogue 4.4–10; see Quint, Epic, pp. 64–65.

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Rome would be destined to rule the world: 6.847 Let others fashion from bronze more lifelike, breathing images – For so they shall – and evoke living faces from marble; Others excel as orators, others track with their instruments 6.850 The planets circling in heaven and predict when stars will appear. But, Romans, never forget that government is your medium! Be this your art: – to practise men in the habit of peace, Generosity to the conquered, and firmness against aggressors.

And her military might has divine authority (8.626-728). Was Paul aware of these claims? Scholarship has asserted that Paul was affected by Graeco-Roman rhetorical traditions, by Hellenistic philosophy, and by societal and cultural norms. If so, then was he aware of the religiopolitical claims being made by Rome, and particularly through the publicly acclaimed Virgilian epic, The Aeneid? Could Paul’s references to the kingship of David, the universal covenant with Abraham, the cosmic character of the Law of Moses, the historicity of the people and Israel as the true people of God, his articulation of the messiahship of Jesus the Son of God and Lord, have all stemmed from a subcultural reading of the Aeneid? Indeed it could be said that ‘Paul was actively engaged in the subversion of much contemporary practice. His career is an example of that outlook which, when translated into reality, tends to shatter, either partially or wholly, the order of things prevailing at the time.’20 Can this therefore be demonstrated from the letter? The exordium of this letter consists of three concentric arrangements that are found in the epistolary prescript (1.1-7), the thanksgiving clause and missionary exhortation combined (1.8-15), and the propositio or theme (1.16-17). These are illustrated as follows: The epistolary prescript (1.1-7): C Paul (1.1a) B The Gospel (1.1b-3a) A Jesus the Christ, who was designated the Son of God with power and our Lord (1.3b-4) B’ The apostolic mission (1.5-6) C’ The addressees (1.7)

The thanksgiving clause and missionary exhortation combined (1.8-15): A 1.8; the faith of the Roman communities is proclaimed in all the world (the universal acclamation/recognition of the Roman Christ-believers’ faith); B 1.9a; Paul serves God with his spirit in the gospel of his Son (the appeal to God in an oath centres the task of Paul’s apostleship);

20. E. Schweizer, A Theological Introduction to the New Testament (London: SPCK, 1992); and C. Rowland, Christian Origins (London: SPCK, 1985), pp. 282–83.



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C 1.9b-10; Paul asks God if in some way now at last by the will of God he may succeed in visiting Rome (the difficulties of Paul’s mission are placed before God in prayer); D 1.11a; (for I long to see you) Paul’s desire for a personal relationship is stressed; E 1.11b-12; (that I may share with you a certain spiritual gift, to strengthen you, that is to be encouraged with you through the mutuality of faith, both yours and mine) the benefit of the visit and its reciprocal nature; D’ 1.13a; Paul has often intended to visit Rome (Paul’s intention for a personal relationship recapitulated); C’ 1.13b; (but has been prevented thus far) Paul’s difficulties recapitulated; B’ 1.13c; (in order that I may have some fruit among you) Paul’s apostolic task recapitulated; A’ 1.13d; Paul’s obligation to preach to the nations, to Greeks and barbarian, wise and foolish, and to those in Rome (the universal scope of Paul’s mission).

This may be summarily presented as follows for clarity: A 1.8; Universal proclamation of faith of Christ-believers in Rome. B 1.9a; Apostolic ministry with respect to source. C 1.9b-10; Prayer for the possibility of a visit to Rome. D 1.11a; Intention to visit. E 1.11b-12; Gift and purposed use in Rome. D’ 1.13a; Intention to visit. C’ 1.13b; Hindrances to the visit. B’ 1.13c; Apostolic ministry with respect to beneficiaries. A’ 1.13d; Universal scope of Paul’s mission.

The propositio or theme (1.16-17): A (For) I am not ashamed of the gospel (Rom. 1.16a) B it is the power of God (Rom. 1.16b) C unto salvation (Rom. 1.16c) D for everyone (Rom. 1.16d) E those who believe (Rom. 1.16e) D’ the Jew first and also the Greek (Rom. 1.16f) C’ (for) in it the justice of God (Rom. 1.17a) B’ is revealed from faith to faith (Rom. 1.17b) A’ as it is written, the righteous one shall live by faith (Rom. 1.17c)

The central term of the epistolary prescript comprises yet another concentrism: D concerning His [God’s] Son (1.3a) C born from the seed of David (1.3b) B according to the flesh (1.3c) A who was designated the Son of God with power (1.4a) B’ according to the spirit of holiness (1.4b) C’ from the resurrection of the dead (1.4c) D’ Jesus Christ our Lord (1.4d)

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When central terms are collated, we derive yet another concentrism that indicates the purpose of writing: A Jesus the Christ, who was designated the Son of God with power and our Lord (1.3b-4) B 1.11b-12; (that I may share with you a certain spiritual gift, to strengthen you, that is to be encouraged with you through the mutuality of faith, both yours and mine) the benefit of the visit and its reciprocal nature; A’ those who believe (Rom. 1.16e)

Paul is writing to pastorally strengthen and encourage those who believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and our Lord. But this has the tendency of being construed in context as being an anti-imperial message. The nuances of his language decisively point to the implications of Paul’s use of Roman imperial language in this letter.21 Let us look at these implications with respect to Romans 9–11 (14–15)22 in which Paul strategically uses the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32) as a map for the rhetorical argumentative progression of this pericope.23 It was earlier stated that the addressees of this letter are not Christians but rather ‘all God’s beloved’ (Rom. 1.7). Paul reminds us that this must include the Jews, for God has not rejected the Israelites (Rom. 11.12); they are still beloved (Rom. 11.28b), even if they do not believe the gospel – the fulfilment lordship of Jesus Christ and the power of God that is at work in his rule (Rom. 11.28a). For this reason they (the Jews, whether Christ-believers or not) are an integral part of the addressees of this letter, for God still has a preference for Israel, and that will never be

21. A. Deissmann, Light from The Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World (trans. L. R. M. Strachan; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), shows how the language of the imperial cult and Christianity was making conflicting claims. 22. That Romans 14–15 depends on the argument of Romans 11, see W. S. Campbell, ‘A Theme for Romans?’, in W. S. Campbell, Paul’s Gospel in an Intercultural Context: Jew and Gentile in the Letter to the Romans (Frankfurt a. M., Bern and New York: Peter Lang, 1992), pp. 161–99, esp. 183–84. 23. W. S. Campbell, ‘The Purpose of Paul in the Letter to the Romans: A Survey of Romans I–XI with Special Reference to Chapters IX–XI’ (PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1972), was among the first to argue that Romans 9–11 was the centre and culmination of the letter. See also his ‘“All God’s Beloved in Rome!” Jewish Roots and Christian Identity’, in S. E. McGinn (ed.), Celebrating Romans: Template for Pauline Theology – Essays in Honor of Robert Jewett (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 67–82. On the concentration of scriptural citations in Romans 9–11, see B. Chilton, ‘Romans 9–11 as Scriptural Interpretation and Dialogue with Judaism’, Ex Auditu (1988), pp. 4, 27–37, esp. 28; C. D. Stanley, Paul and the Language of Scripture: Citation Technique in the Pauline Epistles and Contemporary Literature (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 103–71; Anthony J. Guerra, ‘Romans: Paul’s Purpose and Audience with Special Attention to Romans 9–11’, RB (1990), pp. 97, 219– 37; and J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation With Introductions and Commentary AB 33 (London: Doubleday, 1993), p. 542.



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abrogated for the sake of any other nation.24 The Song of Moses creates on the one hand a theological basis for Paul’s argument, but on the other hand creates a pastoral dilemma. The Song of Moses, reflecting the Deuteronomic theological convention of blessings and curses, begins in the first person singular (Deut. 32.1-3) with an introduction by Moses, and shifts to the third person singular at Deut. 32.4-19 and again at Deut. 32.36-38, as the God of Israel becomes the subject. In Deut. 32.20-35 and Deut. 32.39-42 the speaker changes to God, narrated in the first person, mainly singular but also in the plural when solidarity with Israel is being emphasized. The psalm is proposed to have been recited by Moses to the assembly of Israel outside the promised land just before his death. Patrick Miller sees a six-part structure of the Song of Moses as follows: 25 an introduction (Deut. 32.1-6);26 the recollection of God’s past care of Israel (Deut. 32.7-14);27 a report on Israel’s rebellious and idolatrous response (Deut. 32.15-18);28 the Lord’s sentence of judgement (Deut. 32.19-27);29 the stupidity and corruption of the enemy (Deut. 32.2833);30 and the vindication of God’s people (Deut. 32.34-43).31 That Paul systematically quotes from this psalm throughout Romans 9–15 not only attests to the possible rhetorical integrity and continuity of this section of the letter, but is more so an indication of the ideology that informs Paul’s theology at this point, and allows for consideration of his deviation from the original assumptions of the scriptural texts. The relationship of Paul’s citations to the overall structure is the first consideration of how he adapts the psalm. This is demonstrated thus: Table showing the strategic use of Deuteronomy 32 in Romans 9–15 Structure of the Psalm Introduction (Deut. 32.1-6)

Verse used by Paul

Place used by Paul

Comparative structure of Rom. 9–15

Deut. 32.4

Rom. 9.14

Introduction (Rom. 9.1-5)

24. See Fitzmyer, Romans, pp. 540–42, for a survey of the relationship of Romans 9–11 to the whole letter. To be rejected are E. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, trans. G. Bromiley (London: SCM, 1980), p. 257, and Fitzmyer, Romans, pp. 541–42, who argue that Paul is aware of his anti-Israel, anti-Judaism polemic in his mission to the Gentiles, and is seeking in this letter to adjust his tone. Paul’s use of Deuteronomy 32 suggests otherwise. 25. P. D. Miller, Deuteronomy (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), pp. 223–35, passim. 26. Miller, Deuteronomy, pp. 226–27. 27. Miller, Deuteronomy, pp. 228–29. 28. Miller, Deuteronomy, pp. 229–30. 29. Miller, Deuteronomy, pp. 230–31. 30. Miller, Deuteronomy, pp. 231–32. 31. Miller, Deuteronomy, pp. 232–35.

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Verse used by Paul

Place used by Paul

Comparative structure of Rom. 9–15

God’s past care of Israel (Deut. 32.7-14)

God’s election and preference of Israel (Rom. 9.6-29)

Israel’s rebellious and idolatrous response (Deut. 32.15-18)

Israel’s failure (Rom. 9.30–10.21)

The Lord’s sentence of judgement (Deut. 32.19-27)

Deut. 32.21

Rom. 10.19

The stupidity and corruption of the enemy (Deut. 32.28-33) The vindication of God’s people (Deut. 32.34-43)

The remnant of Israel saved from judgement (Rom. 11.1-10) Correction of the attitude of the nations (Rom. 11.11-24)

Deut. 32.35 Deut. 32.43

Rom. 12.19; 13.11-12 Rom. 15.10

Restoration of Israel (Rom. 11.25-32) and rules of living for God’s people (Rom. 12–15)

In this psalm, probably dating from the early monarchy, Moses’ contention is that, despite the faithfulness of God in dealing with Israel, the latter will prove to be faithless. But that in itself does not mean the end. Richard Clifford, in noting the parallels with Psalm 78, has observed that ‘the purpose of the poem is to convince Israel that the punishment it has undergone for its infidelity is not the end of the covenant. The offer of life still holds.’32 The differences between God and the people of Israel are clearly outlined in Deut. 32.4-6, where God is described as ‘The Rock’,33 a term that depicts God as a support and defence of his people, a sign of stability and dependability; his works are genuine, his ways are just,34 he is faithful, he is just and holy.35 In contrast, Israel stands accused of committing sin, of blame, being crooked, having turned from the stipulations of the covenant. In Deut. 32.8-9,36 32. R. Clifford, Deuteronomy: With an Excursus on Covenant and Law (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1982), p. 168. See also R. E. Clements, Deuteronomy (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press/JSOT, 1989), pp. 46–48, passim. 33. Cf. 32.15, 18, 30, 31. 34. Gk. kri/siv used here in a forensic sense to denote a fair judgment as the Psalm seems to suggest a covenant lawsuit in which Israel stands accused. 35. Miller, Deuteronomy, p. 227. 36. Cf. Gen. 1.26.



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Moses recalls God’s allocation of the nations of the world and the division of human beings in accordance with the number of the gods. God retains Israel for himself, a strong indication that God will always have a claim on the allegiance of Israel.37 In this regard, Clifford recognizes that ‘the agenda for the meeting is the assignment of nations to the protection and patronage of the “sons of God”. In the polytheistic context they are the group of deities sired by the senior god and his cohorts.’38 None of the other gods of heaven participated in the creation: it was Yahweh alone (Deut. 32.10-14), and Israel is depicted as a rich land full of the life-giving power of God (Deut. 32.13-14).39 The Deuteronomic ideology therefore establishes that world order begins not on earth, but in heaven under the one supreme God of Israel and of the universe (the Most High – Deut. 32.8); it is a story about the divine creation of Israel.40 Israel is the property of God and owes her ‘total existence as a protected and prosperous people to the Lord alone’.41 It therefore follows that God intervenes in the affairs of Israel in times of distress. In this way the psalm is one that reflects God’s rescue of the land in time of calamity with the peaceful triumphant procession into and inhabitation of the land. But Israel dared to cross the boundaries and abandoned God in favour of the demons42 and gods not previously known (Deut. 32.15-18, esp. 17) provoking God’s jealousy43 and his anger (Deut. 32.22); Israel’s response to God’s gracious act is nothing short of rebellion. As a result of their covenant unfaithfulness, God is infuriated and withdraws his presence.44 In retribution for Israel’s treatment of God as a ‘no God’ he inflicts on them the status of a ‘no people’ (Deut. 32.21) who are under the control of an enemy king and his army (Deut. 28, esp. 28.49-57), and who functions as the executor of God’s wrath.45 In covenantal terms (Deut. 32.22-25) God turned his wrath on the people of Israel by inflicting them with disasters (Deut. 32.23) and would totally have obliterated them (Deut. 32.26) were it not for his fear of provocation by the enemy and the misunderstanding that could arise among the adversaries of Israel, if in their success they should boast: ‘Our hand is triumphant; it was not the Lord who did all this’ (Deut. 32.27). Deut 32.2833 deals emphatically with God’s use of the nations as instruments of his wrath against Israel, and opens with the ironic statement that neither Israel 37. Which is established in Deut. 32.7-14 – see Clifford, Deuteronomy, p. 169. 38. Clifford, Deuteronomy, pp. 169–70. 39. Clifford, Deuteronomy, p. 172. 40. Clifford, Deuteronomy, pp. 169–70. 41. Clifford, Deuteronomy, p. 170. 42. Cf. Ps. 106.37-38 and probably referring to the Canaanite deities. 43. Deut. 32.21; cf. Rom. 10.19. 44. Deut. 32.19-25, esp. v. 20, ‘hide his face’. 45. Assyria; cf. Isa. 10.5-19; 14.24-27, an unnamed enemy from the north Jer. 1.1314; 4.5-31; 5.15-17; 6.1-5, where God uses foreign political powers to accomplish his wrath.

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nor the nations understand what the end will be, so that God intervenes.46 The result is proof of the power of God. The nameless nation, now defeated, was too arrogant to realize that its victory was allowed by God, who had withdrawn his protection of Israel in disgust; this nation’s dominance was not through its own superior might (Deut. 32.30-31) but through God’s will. The Song assumes that the difficulties that have befallen Israel are due to God abandoning the nation because of its unfaithfulness (Deut. 32.30). In an address in which Yahweh challenges Israel and the nations to recognize his supremacy and uniqueness, God waits before punishing the enemy nation (Deut. 32.34-35), but God’s intervention is sure; for Israel’s destitute state will invite Yahweh’s compassion (Deut. 32.36) and ensure the adjudication of Israel (Deut. 32.37-39).47 In fact the gods of the nations cannot be compared to the God of Israel, and the enemies are fools (Deut. 32.31; cf. Rom. 1.14). The gods of the nations can do nothing at this critical stage to help their allotted nations; they are effectively silenced (Deut. 32.38); there is no one to stand up to his formidable might to protect their interests (Deut. 32.39); and all the enemies of God, who are the enemies of Israel, eventually lay slain before his military remonstrations (Deut. 32.40-42). The day of judgement and of divine rescue demonstrates God’s power in the universe as creator and sole benefactor, saviour, protector and judge.48 In this ending pericope there is a description of the cruelty of the nations, by utilizing a metaphor, ‘venom of asps’, which Paul has already employed at Rom. 3.13.49 The Deuteronomistic poet concludes the psalm by recapitulating the Shema (Deut. 32.39a, see Rom. 3.29-30; 10.12), affirming the sovereign power of God over life and death (Deut. 32.39b), allusion to which Paul has already made in Rom. 4.17.50 The psalm ends with a hymn of praise (Deut. 32.43),51 part of which Paul quotes, though not seeming to follow either the Septuagint or the Masoretic Text, in Rom. 15.10. All the nations are now expected to pay obeisance to God.52 As it stands in Rom. 15.10, this citation, along with ones from Ps. 18.49, 117.1 and Isa. 11.10 in Rom. 9, 10 and 12 respectively, seem to emphasize not just the inclusion of the nations, but the nations worshipping alongside the people of Israel, and altogether under the lordship of ‘the root of Jesse’. If we read this in such a manner that we may deduce that which must be corrected from that which is affirmed, then it 46. Cf. Rom. 3.11 = Ps. 14.2, 53.2 (13.2, 52.2 LXX) = approx. Hab. 1.11b: ‘No one understands, no one seeks for God’; and compare with Deut. 32.28. As with the prophet Habakkuk, there is an end, a vision of the appointed time (Hab. 2.3), but in their ignorance the nations do not discern it (Deut. 32.29). 47. Clifford, Deuteronomy, p. 172. 48. Clifford, Deuteronomy, pp. 172–73; (cf. Isa. 41.4; 43.10-11, 13, 25; 51.12). 49. Rom. 3.13b = Ps. 140.3; 139.4 LXX cf. Deut. 32.33. 50. Cf. 1 Sam. 2.6 (1 Kings 2.6 LXX); 2 Kings 5.7 (4 Kings 5.7 LXX); as well as Wis. 16.13; Tob. 13.2, 4 Macc. 18.18-19. 51. See Rom. 15.10. 52. See Fitzmyer, Romans, p. 707, and D. J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 879, for the difficulties pertaining to this text in the original setting.



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seems highly plausible that the rejection of the Jews (Christian or otherwise) returning to Rome on the relaxation of the Claudian edicts by Nero stands at the centre of the controversy. Miller, drawing on and agreeing with the work of Harold Fisch, describes ‘the power and potential of this song that is to be regularly sung as a witness against unfaithfulness not yet manifest’.53 The unnamed nation allowed for subsequent generations to adopt the message to their contexts; it was a strategy that allowed for the context to determine content, thereby legitimizing the fluidity of the Deuteronomic theological presupposition, (as was evident in the redaction of the book of Jeremiah).54 Paul uses Deuteronomic theology/ideology to justify the political status quo of Israel, and while on the one hand he is willing to ascribe Israel’s demise to its own unbelief, he is also willing to compensate for this by introducing an ideological tradition that stands opposite to the Deuteronomic conviction, namely, the wisdom tradition on the other hand. Paul uses the Song of Moses as a double-entendre. For Miller, Paul’s use of Deut. 32.43 is critical for the community: It takes the important theological claim of Deuteronomy 32 that the Lord will have vindication over all those who resist the Lord’s way of righteousness and obedience and sees in it an ethical and moral claim: that the vindication God will bring about is not something others can claim. Here Paul has understood this vindication specifically as requital for a wrong deed, and in this case a wrong deed on the human plane, within the human community. If it is the case that a gracious, merciful, and just God will vindicate the divine purposes and overcome evil in that process, it is equally true that that right or responsibility for vindication does not belong to human beings. ‘Vengeance [or vindication] is mine’ means not only that the Lord will have it but that we may not have it. The human response to evil is found in the way of forgiveness and reconciliation.55

Paul’s pastoral advice is that vengeance is to be left to the wrath of God, citing Deut. 32.3556 to support his argument. Paul’s use of the Song is of theological importance to the nation of Israel. Paul’s expansive use of the text from Deuteronomy would seem to affirm the aggressive and dominant relationship being exercised over Israel by the nations around her, and which 53. Miller, Deuteronomy, pp. 225–26. 54. R. Carroll, From Chaos to Covenant: Prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah (New York: Crossroad, 1981); and idem, Jeremiah (London: SCM, 1986). See also E. Achtemeier, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1978), p. 49 and the bibliographical reference there. M. Reasoner, ‘Paul’s Redemptive Inversions of Jeremiah in Romans 9–11’, SBL Annual Meeting, Toronto, 2002, finds Jeremiah to be the interpretative framework for Romans 9–11. S. R. Driver, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1895), pp. 347–48, sees a connection between the psalm and both Jeremiah and Ezekiel. See also R. Bergey, ‘The Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32.1-43) and Isaianic Prophecies: A Case of Early Intertextuality?’, JSOT (2003), pp. 28–31, 33–54. 55. Miller, Deuteronomy, pp. 234–35. 56. Lev. 19.18.

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in historical context would seem to affirm Rome as the guilty party, and the gods of Rome as those who are in cosmological conflict with the God of Israel. With these assumptions we can therefore reconstruct the crisis that led to Romans 9–11 and to the paraenetic advice in Romans 12–15. The overriding theological presupposition of Paul is based on the theology of Deuteronomy: obedience is rewarded with blessings, disobedience with punishment or God’s wrath. The latter presupposition was specifically stated at Rom. 1.18 and formed the basis of Paul’s theological judgement on the idolatry of Rome, its emperors, and those Jews who sought alliances with the Roman system. For Paul, Rome represented the instrument of God’s wrath in the present context, but Rome’s demise was also evident. If God has appointed Rome as the instrument of his wrath to punish disobedience, it seems to logically follow that Israel has been disobedient. It also seems to logically follow that any person siding with Rome would legitimately be exercising the divine authority in punishing the Jews. If however, Israel has not been disobedient and yet continues to incur God’s wrath, then the logical conclusion would be that God is unjust. In fact, to hold out the notion of election on one hand while justifying God’s wrath on the other would appear to be theologically incompatible. Paul overcomes this difficulty by stressing throughout Romans 9–11 that while God’s reward of the human response to covenant cannot be manipulated by the latter, God himself is not restricted to the terms of the covenant. The Jewish understanding of God was such that he could change his mind and use his creation for his eternal purposes (Rom. 9.19-24; 11.33-36).57 Humanity, however, does not have this freedom, and cannot presume to undertake that which legitimately belongs to God, to automatically designate themselves to be instruments of God’s wrath. It is for this reason therefore that Christ-believers must also follow the exemplum of Jesus Christ and Paul, and offer themselves not as instruments of God’s wrath, but as living sacrifices (Rom. 12.1); not seeking to imitate Rome (Rom. 12.2), but rather as members of the body of Christ, giving full support to each other for the mutual upbuilding, mutual benefaction, of the body (Rom. 12.3-8). Such a community is characterized by love (Rom. 12.9-10a), in showing one another honour, rather than competing for it (Rom. 12.10b); it lives by serving the Lord of all creation, not the lords of this world (Rom. 12.11); it lives out its tribulations in hope and constant communion with God (Rom. 12.12); it inverts the social norms of revenge and the culture of violence that so typifies the empire; its members are to live in harmony with one another and it advocates thinking highly of others, not acting out of arrogance and pride (Rom. 12.16); its members are to live at peace with all (Rom. 12.18). Paul stresses that members of the community are not to see themselves as effecting God’s wrath – they can neither abrogate for themselves that position nor can they justify acting in such a manner. Paul comes home to the problem of the community, and among a list of 57. See, for example, N. May, ‘Job and Jeremiah: Understanding the Divine Moral Order through Lament and Response’, JBS 3 (1) (2003), pp. 22–26.



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other positive and endearing qualities explicitly states his position on the theological-pastoral dilemma that some of the Gentile Christians may face. Even though God may have chosen Rome to act as the instrument of his wrath (maybe against the Jews), Gentile Romans cannot presume to undertake this task. Their bodies are now instruments of righteousness, and their behaviour must correspond to this new reality; a life in which Rome no longer has authority over their actions (Rom. 6.13-14). Mark Nanos notes that what interpreters see as inconsistency in Paul’s thought in Romans 9–11 is due to their failure to recognize that Paul’s concern for the Gentiles is grounded in the major formative factor of his Jewish theological perspective: ‘God is one’.58 Nanos concludes: I understand the mystery in Romans 11 to set out Paul’s view that in some unexpected way the pro-Gentile aspects of the development, and the current lack of participation in this scheme by some Israelites, is not to be taken to mean that the line has been redrawn so as to exclude these Jewish people. But they are rather ‘surprisingly’ served by these fortunate Gentiles. And this is to confront a social identity boundary among the Roman Gentiles that is beginning to be drawn mistakenly, so as to preclude the continued participation of Jewish people who were not part of this coalition. Paul’s message undermines this Gentilecentric viewpoint by asserting this to the Gentiles: the Jewish people’s good has been on behalf of you, so now your good as Gentiles is on behalf of them (ch. 11); ‘therefore,’ have your viewpoint altered (to see things from God’s vantage point) so that you are dedicated to their service, not destruction (chs. 12–16).59

Nanos is correct in his conclusion, but the latent pressure brought about by the fear of imperial policy is not to be overlooked. Our suggestion rather is that the Gentile Christians in Rome were seeking to bring about conformity through the implementation of social pressure on the Jews in order to avoid the attention that this group consistently attracted from the Roman imperial policymakers. According to James C. Scott, the methods by which the conformity and control are brought about can be painful and often ugly. Slander, character assassination, gossip, rumour, public gestures of contempt, shunning, curses, backbiting, outcasting are only a few of the sanctions that subordinates can bring to bear on each other. Reputation in any small, closely knit community has very practical consequences.

Scott continues to suggest that: Solidarity among subordinates, if it is achieved at all, is thus achieved, paradoxically, only by means of a degree of conflict. Certain forms of social strife, far from

58. M. D. Nanos, ‘Challenging the Limits that Continue to Define Paul’s Perspective’, in C. Grenholm and D. Patte (eds), Reading Israel in Romans: Legitimacy and Plausibility of Divergent Interpretations (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), pp. 212–24 (esp. 223). 59. Nanos, ‘Challenging the Limits’, pp. 222–23.

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constituting evidence of disunity and weakness, may well be the signs of an active, progressive social surveillance that preserves unity.60

It is highly probable that the Gentile Christ-believers unaffected by the edict of ad 49 considered the return of the Jews a potential threat to the stability of the Christian community, particularly if these Jews would continue to attract the attention of the imperial authorities. Under such conditions, it would have been better to exclude them, and preserve group cohesiveness. Paul advocates that the Gentiles are not to fall back into the fear imposed by the imperial authorities that controlled them, though they should fear them for the right reason (Rom. 13.3, 7). Members of the Christian community probably would have justified the persecution of the Jews from their knowledge of the Jewish scriptures as God’s continued wrath against them; a motif that was supported by the tenets of Roman religion, where the wrath of the gods was appeased through the offering of sacrifices. This possible potential syncretism had therefore to be addressed by Paul. Rather than sacrificing the Jews (irrespective of whether they are Christ-believers or not), or shunning them out of fear of reprisal, or incorrectly usurping divine authority and seeing them as worthy of God’s wrath, Paul advocates for a community in which each member is willing to be a devotio in imitation of Christ; to nobly accept death on behalf of the other. Feldman noted a parallelism between the nations of Rome and Israel, and concludes: [These] peoples may well have been enhanced by their common view that they had been divinely chosen for a unique destiny, as the Bible, on the one hand, and Livy and Virgil, on the other hand, emphasize. Each was said to have engaged, after great suffering, in a massive national exodus to a promised land, the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan, the Romans from Troy to Rome. Each had a great leader, Moses and Aeneas respectively, who had a very special relationship to the divinity. Moreover, both the Bible and Virgil have an apocalyptic technique that looks forward to a kind of salvation.61

Romans 9–11 sets this tension in perspective. Rome has a temporary status in God’s eternal plan for human history, contrary to Virgil’s assertion that Rome has been ordained to eternal rule. Israel (Jacob) and not Rome (Esau) is still preferred; the election is irrevocable. The Messiah, born of the seed of David and of the flesh of an Israelite, has demonstrated that God’s promises are still sure. To affirm the lordship of Jesus Christ is to simultaneously recognize the preference of Israel. But to recognize the primacy of Israel is also to accept the importance of the Jews,

60. J. C. Scott, Domination and Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts of Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 128–34, but particularly p. 133. 61. L. H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 102–03.



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irrespective of whether such a person believes in Christ. No Gentile Christbeliever can claim the right to be an instrument of God’s wrath against the Jews, even if Rome has been appointed to act in that position, justifying the Claudian edict and Jewish repression, at least from Paul’s perspective. And still Paul hopes that his Jewish kin will come to accept Jesus as Lord and Messiah in anticipation of the day when the tribes of Israel will be restored, and all nations glorify the one God. For Paul, God is still in control of his creation; his power is irrefutable, seen in the promise to Abraham and the birth of Isaac against all odds; in the resurrection of Jesus Christ as Lord of the universe; in the restoration of Israel and the defeat of her enemies and oppressors, of which the chief is, in Paul’s context, Rome; and in the unification of the nations in worship of the one God of Israel. Such was Paul’s apocalyptic universe; his hope of salvation. In his compelling analysis of the argument of Romans 9–11 Campbell has shown that, irrespective of how the Gentile Christians may think or act, ‘the Jews are still beloved (Rom. 11.28) on account of the election of the patriarchs’ 62 even if they may appear to be enemies of God. Campbell, in reference to Rom. 11.11-29, notes the double approach of Paul’s analogy of the dough/first fruits and the roots/branches, (which is central to the pericope in Rom. 11.11-24), to remind the Gentile Christians (and commentators) that ‘the reality of the first fruits points to the sanctification of the total harvest, and the holiness of the roots determines the sanctity of all the branches’ and that ‘the branches do not constitute the living tree’.63 In this argument, the branches and the roots, both of which are described as holy, point decisively to the Jewish roots of Christianity, and as Campbell succinctly states, ‘the links with Jerusalem’.64 A political-pastoral reading of Paul’s letter to the Romans can only have been possible having sat at the feet of Dr William Campbell. His patience and tolerance, his guidance and perseverance, were indicative of a man shaped by the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. May his contribution to Pauline theology, particularly Paul’s letter to the Romans, take its rightful place in the New Testament academy.

62. W. S. Campbell, ‘The Freedom and Faithfulness of God in Relation to Israel’, in Campbell, Paul’s Gospel, pp. 43–59. 63. Campbell, Paul’s Gospel, p. 51. 64. Campbell, Paul’s Gospel, p. 51.

Chapter 6

‘Called to be saints’– the Identity-shaping Dimension of Paul’s Priestly Discourse in Romans1 Kathy Ehrensperger 1. Presuppositions in Interpretation A wide range of evaluations concerning the character of Romans 14.1–15.13 has been presented in recent scholarship, ranging from considerations that view this section (1) to be paraenetical guidance to the otherwise highly theological letter to the Romans,2 (2) to provide evidence of the actual situation which Paul addresses,3 (2) to be inherently linked to the previous sections of the letter in that this part presents the concrete outworking of Paul’s theologizing,4 or (4) even that this is the actual culmination of the letter.5 Key issues discussed in relation to this passage are hospitality, table-fellowship, and the identity of the weak and the strong. In addition, verses 14.14 and 20 render this passage key in the discussion concerning Paul’s view of the Torah. These verses are frequently perceived to provide proof that ultimately Paul considers the Torah to have lost its validity for all those who are in Christ. This is the interpretation one would expect in approaches that perceive Paul to be the advocate of a law-free gospel as one who has broken away from the bonds of Judaism; but even approaches that see Paul as embedded in Judaism perceive these verses as evidence that his stance eventually must lead to an ‘undermining’ of the Torah. 1. For Bill, whose companionship on our journey means more to me than words can tell. Earlier versions of this article have been presented at the SBL International Meeting in Rome 2009 and the SNTS Annual Meeting in Vienna, 2009. 2. Cf. for example, J. D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998). 3. W. S.Campbell, ‘The Addressees of Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Assemblies of God in House Churches and Synagogues?’, in F. Wilk and J. R. Wagner (eds), Between Gospel and Election: Explorations in the Interpretation of Romans 9–11 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. 171–96. 4. Cf. Barclay who argues ‘… that in Romans 14.1–15.5 we are given valuable insight into the practical effects of Paul’s stance on the law, even though the term no/mov does not appear in this passage’; ‘“Do we undermine the Law?” A Study of Romans 14.1– 15.6’, in J. D. G. Dunn (ed.), Paul and the Mosaic Law (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman, 1996), pp. 287–308 (esp. 287).



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The statements ou0de\n koino_n di’ e9autou= (nothing is profane/unclean in itself, 14.14), and pa/nta me _n ka/qara (all is clean, 14.20) are seen as clear indications that Paul actually no longer adheres to the Jewish food laws, and thus considers the role of the law as having come to an end in Christ. In John Barclay’s words ‘This constitutes nothing less than a fundamental rejection of the Jewish law in one of its most sensitive dimensions.’6 Barclay is one of many who come to such a conclusion. Leander E. Keck, Robert Jewett, and Troels Engberg-Pedersen are in agreement in their careful analyses of the passage, concluding convincingly in my view that Paul emphasizes the responsibility of the ‘strong’ not to cause the ‘weak’ to stumble over this issue of food and drink, thus putting the demand to change on the ‘strong’ to accommodate the ‘weak’.7 Nevertheless, they are of the view that these verses are radical if not revolutionary,8 and that ‘the motto declares a complete break from the purity laws that bound both Judaism and the Greco-Roman world’.9 The insistence on adhering to Jewish food laws is designated as ‘wholly unjustified scruples of their Jewish brothers’.10 There is a wide consensus that Paul’s main concern here is maintaining the unity of ‘all God’s beloved in Rome who are called to be saints’ (Rom. 1.7). A key element in the living out of such unity seems to be tablefellowship between Jews and Gentiles in Christ. This is the main aspect of the significance of hospitality and accommodation to each other that Paul so powerfully advocates here. It is obvious that those who abstain from eating meat are not pushed to give up their practice but rather the strong are admonished to accommodate out of concern for the weaker brothers.11 5. Cf. W. S. Campbell, ‘The Rule of Faith in Romans 12:1–15:13: The Obligation of Humble Obedience to Christ as the Only Adequate Response to the Mercies of God’, in D. M. Hay and E. E. Johnson (eds), Pauline Theology, Vol. III (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995) pp. 259–86. 6. Barclay, ‘“Do we undermine the Law?”’, p. 300. 7. Cf., for example, Barclay, who states that ‘Paul is careful to preserve the legitimacy of the law-observance among Roman Christians. His requirement that the strong adapt their diet at the communal meals is a measure of how seriously he takes this matter’; in ‘“Do we undermine the Law?”’, p. 303, also Jewett, Romans, p. 860. 8. L. E. Keck, Romans (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2005), p. 344. 9. R. Jewett, Romans (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), p. 867. Jewett’s position oscillates slightly in the evaluation of the Pauline statements here. Concerning the beginning of chapter 14 he draws attention to what seems to be a two-way exaggeration: it is unlikely that anybody in Rome would just eat ‘everything’, in as much as it seems unlikely that Jews would ‘only’ have eaten vegetables. 10. T. Engberg-Pedersen, ‘“Everything is clean” and “Everything that is not of faith is sin”: The Logic of Pauline Casuistry in Romans 14.1–15.13’, in P. Middleton, A. Paddison and K. Wendell (eds), Paul, Grace and Freedom: Essays in Honour of John K. Riches (New York and London: T&T Clark, 2008), pp. 22–38 (esp. 34). 11. Cf. W. S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006 [pb 2008]), pp. 113–20; K. Ehrensperger, That We May Be Mutually Encouraged: Feminism and the New Perspective in Pauline Studies (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2004), pp. 181–89, now also Engberg-Pedersen, ‘“Everything is clean”’, p. 37.

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The problem with many interpretations is that the accommodation is seen as a temporary measure, necessary only for a limited time until the ‘weak’ have gained proper strength in faith and adopt the practice of the ‘law-free’ gospel.12 This implies that they would eventually be able to overcome their ‘wholly unjustified scruples’ and eat everything. Accommodation is perceived to serve the purpose of leading those with ‘scruples’ to a stage where they too can see ‘what God has done through Christ as the only thing that matters’.13 Paul is seen as advocating tolerance, a paternalistic attitude exercised by those in power. Although Barclay, Jewett, Keck, and Engberg-Pedersen all emphasize that this tolerance of the practice of the weak is not a minor issue since, for the weak, changing their practice would violate their faith, to maintain that Paul’s assertion ‘tacitly grants the individual the right to be wrong … and that such a person is to be respected’ does not really overcome the basic assumption that those who adhere to food laws are wrong, or are ‘displaying a defect in their faith’. Paul is perceived as advocating that actually ‘the distinction between clean and unclean has been done away’,14 which in essence means the abrogation of the law.15 This is a problematic stance in itself and it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the issue further in any detail but in my view such a paternalistic attitude cannot be in tune with the ‘imitation of Christ’ Paul advocates elsewhere (1 Cor. 4.16-17; 11.1).16 It also is hardly in tune with the ‘welcoming of Christ’, the example Christ-followers are admonished to follow in their ‘welcoming of each other’ (Rom. 15.7).17 Most significantly, it would require that eventually Jews in Christ would have to give up their identity as Jews and accommodate to the Gentiles’ way of life in Christ, obliterating differences and rendering the Gentile way of life, that is, a particular way of life, the norm for being in Christ. 12. Cf. Käsemann, who claims that ‘Die bleibende dogmatische Bedeutung von 14a liegt darin, dass nicht nur die Frage reiner und verunreinigender Speisen beantwortet, sondern der für die gesamte Antike grundlegende, bis heute nachwirkende Unterschied zwischen kultischer und profaner Sphäre für den Christen aufgehoben wird’; An die Römer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1973), p. 359. 13. Engberg-Pedersen, ‘“Everything is clean”’, p. 35. 14. J. D. G. Dunn, Romans 9–16 (Dallas: WBC, 1988), p. 830. 15. As, for example, Barclay asserts; cf. ‘“Do we undermine the Law?”’ Dunn’s stance is more nuanced here in that he maintains that although this is Paul’s own conviction, he advocates that those who do not share this perception have to be respected: ‘Paul does not so much call for the abolition of the law of clean and unclean as for shifting the basis on which such a distinction may be regarded as relevant in the Christian community … as an issue affecting the expression of liberty within a community which embraces diverse viewpoints’; Romans 9–16, p. 820. 16. Cf. my Paul and the Dynamics of Power: Communication and Interaction in the Early Christ-movement (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2007 [2009 pb]), pp. 137–54. 17. Cf. also Paula Fredriksen’s critique of Barclay in her ‘Paul, Purity and the Ekklesia of the Gentiles’, in J. Pastor and M. Mor (eds), The Beginnings of Christianity: A Collection of Articles (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2005), pp. 205–17 (esp. 215–17).



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The conclusion that Paul’s statements in vv. 14 and 20 imply an abrogation of the Torah seems to be based on a number of presuppositions. The first and most basic assumption is that these verses are a declaration of nullification of these laws wholesale and for everybody. From this it is concluded, since these laws are likewise irrelevant for those in Christ, all laws, the whole of the Torah, are declared irrelevant. The second frequent assumption is that the distinction between pure and impure, and holy and profane, refers to a Jewish peculiarity unique in the Graeco-Roman world or the Ancient Near East. A third aspect that often seems to be presupposed in the interpretations of these verses is that the characterization of a particular group in ethnic terms or in terms of cult via peculiar eating habits is seen as something uniquely Jewish as well. These three main presuppositions individually or combined shape most interpretations of these verses. They are perceived as cultural-historical facts without much further elaboration. It does not come as a surprise then that scholars starting with these presuppositions come to the conclusions mentioned above. But if one were to question or at least critically evaluate the presuppositions on which these interpretations are based I envisage the possibility of arriving at different conclusions. This chapter is a proposal in this direction. I will first address issues related to the second and third presuppositions, although this can only be done in a sketchy way, before discussing aspects related to the first presupposition. 2. The Context: Purity/Impurity and Holy/Profane in Graeco-Roman Culture The notion of contextualization has been advocated strongly and with diverse emphases in Pauline studies.18 When specific attention is paid to the GraecoRoman context, Paul’s theologizing is often compared with philosophical ideas of the time.19 Thus when it comes to Paul’s theologizing, contextualization is seen as an important factor for understanding the Pauline letters. However, it is significant to note that when aspects of practical life, ritual and cult come into play, these are mostly attributed to a unique Jewish pattern, which in many cases is evaluated as a negative factor or at least as a factor that Paul would have overcome, and perceived as superfluous for life in Christ. Although I do not question the validity of comparative studies that focus on elements of Graeco-Roman ideas and Paul’s theologizing, such comparisons 18. W. S. Campbell has been a consistent advocate for the social as well as theological contextualization of Paul’s activities and theologizing. 19. Cf., for example, T. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2000), L. Welborn, Paul, the Fool of Christ: A Study of 1 Corinthians 1–4 in the Comic-Philosophic Tradition (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2005).

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should not be confined mainly to the realm of philosophy. If contextualization is taken seriously then all aspects of life need to be considered relevant; this includes cult and ritual as well as seemingly mundane things such as eating and drinking etc. Ritual and cult are not only significant aspects of a Jewish way of life; they are key aspects of life for all Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures in antiquity.20 The focus on ritual, even on the distinction between pure and impure, far from being a particularly Jewish characteristic, is actually, in diverse ways, a shared cultural feature in as much as certain elements of thinking are shared. As S. J. D. Cohen highlights: ‘The observance of purity rules and of dietary taboos did not in and of themselves make Jews distinctive in the ancient world.’21 To perceive Paul as influenced by GraecoRoman thought, whilst neglecting or ignoring the concrete side of life in the Mediterranean, or depicting such aspects as a relic of his Jewish heritage, is methodologically questionable. The patronage system, honour and shame values, and kinship language have been recognized as significant structuring categories throughout the ancient Mediterranean, and thus as dimensions that need to be taken into account when contextualizing the Pauline letters. To these the dimension of ritual and cult needs to be added as a crucial factor in the shaping of the life-world of Graeco-Roman as much as Jewish culture. Paul, in talking of such issues in his letters, and in Rom. 14.1–15.13 in particular, would not have been talking in strange language or categories alien to his audience, whether Jewish or Gentile.22 The categorization of all aspects of life into holy and profane and, related to these, pure and impure is basic to life in antiquity. Concerning this distinction in classical Greece, A. Bendlin states that ‘The conceptualization of boundaries – both real and imagined – between the sacred and the secular realms – between purity and normality – is a matter of serious attention.’ 23 This is all the more significant, as there was no dimension of life that was not touched by the realm of the divine, and thus by these distinctions. The gods were involved in all aspects of life, particularly the most significant: birth, sexuality, and death. Specific space and time was allocated to the realm of the gods, and the relationship with the divine realm was organized through offerings and sacrifices. There were specific rules and regulations organized around the events, places, times and practices which involved the gods. Events concerning life and death mark humans off from the gods. They were associated with specific impurities and required specific rites to restore humans ‘to a fit state for keeping company with the divine, and so these rites 20. This has recently been emphasized by R. DeMaris, The New Testament in its Ritual World (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 37–56. 21. S. J. D. Cohen, ‘Common Judaism in Greek and Latin Authors’, in F. Udoh et al. (eds), Redefining First Century Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of E. P. Sanders (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), pp. 69–87 (esp. 77). 22. Cf. Fredriksen, ‘Paul, Purity, and the Gentiles’, p. 205. 23. A. Bendlin, ‘Purity and Pollution’, in D. Ogden (ed.), A Companion to Greek Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 178–81 (esp. 180). Cf. also R. Parker, Misama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 2–6.



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of purification continued, wherever people were born, had sexual relations and died’.24 Specifically, when entering the sacred realm purification was one of the requirements prior to crossing the boundary to the divine.25 Bendlin further draws attention to the fact that the Greek leges sacrae note numerous sources of ‘ritual pollution, the time which has to pass before the polluted person may enter the sanctuary, and the required purificatory ritual’.26 Space does not allow for dealing with these issues in more detail here27 but what is significant to note is the evidence for the organization of the life-world into the realm of the divine, that is, the holy and the profane in association with, but distinct from, the division of aspects of life into pure and impure. Requirements of purification, or adhering to either rituals to restore, or maintain, certain patterns of behaviour to preserve a state of purity, is thus obviously not a specific concern of Jews but of all peoples around the Mediterranean in the ancient world.28 Thus purity regulations as such are not exceptional and would not have distinguished the Jews from any other group or people.29 It therefore does not come as a surprise that this aspect is not mentioned in Greek and Latin authors when describing distinctive characteristics of the Jews.30 What is mentioned of course is their abstention from pork (in addition to circumcision and the keeping of the Sabbath). However, even this is not remarkable as such, in that it is a variation within a pattern of categorization familiar around the Mediterranean. As Schäfer asserts ‘… different people behave differently in respect of food in people’s worship of their gods … Dietary laws, like the prohibition of eating pork, belong to the worship of gods, and they are as diverse as the belief in different gods.’31 Sextus Empiricus, writing in the second century ce, notes that ‘a Jew or an Egyptian priest would prefer to die instantly rather than eat pork, while the taste of mutton is reckoned an abomination in the eyes of a Lybian, and Syrians think the same about pigeons and others about cattle’.32 And Plutarch discusses 24. R. L. Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth: Viking, 1986), p. 83. 25. DeMaris notes the location of two basins at the entrance to the Asklepeion in Corinth and suggests that the function of the smaller one was ‘to provide water for purification before sacrifice and entry into the temple’; New Testament in its Ritual World, p. 48. 26. Bendlin, ‘Purity and Pollution’, p. 181. 27. Cf. my study Holiness Discourse in Paul, forthcoming 2011. 28. Thus, recently, also M. Vahrenhorst, Kultische Sprache in den Paulus-Briefen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), pp. 7–9. 29. Cf., for example, regulation of access to the sacred for women after giving birth, in Parker, Miasma, pp. 352–56. 30. Even the connection between purity and dining is not uniquely Jewish. DeMaris reports archaeological finds of sacral water basins near dining rooms in the Demeter and Kore sanctuary in Corinth which indicate a close connection between ritual cleansing and dining; New Testament, pp. 48–49. 31. P. Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1997), p. 70. 32. Schäfer, Judeophobia, p. 70 – see there for precise reference. Although this is a second-century reference, I cannot see any reason why the situation would have been radically different in the mid-first century.

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the requirement of priests of Jupiter to abstain from even touching either flour or yeast, or raw flesh.33 And when the women of Eleusis celebrated the festival of the Haloa this included a common meal where everything could be eaten ‘except these forbidden in the Mysteries – pomegranates, apples, eggs, and fowls, and certain specified kinds of fish’.34 Examples like these (more could be added)35 demonstrate clearly in my view that issues concerning food in relation to purity and the sacred are by no means peculiar to Judaism. On the contrary, they are actually what Judaism has in common with the cultures around the Mediterranean, and the question was not whether but which kind of food should not be eaten by whom in what circumstances.36 It has been argued that the consistent note Greek and Latin authors take of the Jews abstaining from eating pork is evidence that Jewish identity was seen as characterized through eating practices. This argument overlooks two aspects that have to be taken into account here: it is a characteristic of Greek and Latin ‘ethnography’ to describe people in terms of difference rather than similarities. Thus the fact that aspects where Jews differ from others are mentioned is typical of their style of writing, in relation not only to Jews but to all other peoples as well.37 The Persians were known for their luxurious food, whereas ‘barbarians’ were significantly classified as meat-eaters, nomadic tribes as milk-drinkers. Civilized cultures like Greeks and Romans perceived themselves as cultivated not least because their staple food was grain; that is, agriculture was at the heart of their self-understanding.38 Greeks and Romans characterized themselves via food and thus perceived ‘themselves as different with their foods, their relationship to animals and the land’.39 This leads to the insight that food did play a significant role for Jews in many aspects of their lives, but this again is a feature shared with other ancient Mediterranean cultures. ‘Food did not only keep people alive; it also helped them to shape their identity.’40 It was an integral part of the cultural system of the Graeco-Roman world, identity shaping and at the heart of the cult, the exchange system between gods and humans. Purity regulations and issues concerning food at the exchange boundary between gods and humans thus, far from being Jewish peculiarities, were shared key aspects of life in ancient societies around the Mediterranean. These shared aspects provide the context of the particular Jewish regulations and the wider context of Paul addressing issues of food and drink, and the 33. Plutarch, Roman Questions, 109–10; 289e–290a. 34. J. M. Wilkins and S. Hill, Food in the Ancient World (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), p. 107. 35. For further examples see also Vahrenhorst, Kultische Sprache, pp. 90–92. 36. Cf. Schäfer, Judeophobia, p. 70. 37. Cf. Cohen, ‘Common Judaism’, p. 81. 38. Cf. Wilkins, who notes that ‘“the milled life” was in fact a term in Greek for the civilized order – and all the hard work necessary to prepare and grind the grain was performed largely by women or slaves’; Food, p. 117. 39. Wilkins and Hill, Food, p. 37. 40. Wilkins and Hill, Food, p. 15.



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discussion of koino/ v and kaqaro/ v in particular. Thus the fact that Paul was addressing such issues, and the terminology and perceptions that were associated with them, was far from foreign even to a Gentile audience. To refer to these distinctions is rather familiar talk to the ears of both Jews and Gentiles. 2.1 To eat or not to eat – the decisive question? There can be no doubt that Paul perceived the categories of holy/profane and pure/impure as understood in Jewish tradition to be of decisive identityshaping significance also for those in Christ. What needs to be taken into account is that the two pairs holy/profane and pure/impure are two distinct categories. In many publications dealing with the passage in question they are treated as synonyms – or, at least, profane and impure are perceived to be identical. Such a blurring of the differences between the categories can even be found in the TDNT.41 This blurring of the categories is replicated in translations of and commentaries42 and articles on the passage when, concerning 14.14, it is claimed that this is a ‘strong denial of the Scriptural distinction between “clean” and “unclean” food’43 without any further explanation. James D. G. Dunn and Robert Jewett in their commentaries note the distinction in terminology between v. 14 and v. 20, and translate koino/ n with ‘profane’ but do not attribute further significance to this peculiar distinction. They both refer to 1 Macc. 1.47 and 62, where koino/ n is used in conjunction with eating, implying that the food in question is impure, and they view Paul as using the word in the same vein.44 However, the distinction between the categories holy/profane and pure/ impure should not be blurred lightly. Although these two pairs are often mentioned in one and the same verse, as for example in Lev. 10.10, Ezek. 22.26 and 44.23, they are never referred to as synonyms.45 Research by Christine Hayes, Jonathan Klawans, Saul Olyan and, last but not least, Mary Douglas shed significant light on the differences between these categories which are relevant for the passages under discussion here. A brief note on these basic distinctions must be sufficient here. 41. TDNT III, 428, where it is stated: ‘The distinction between profane (koino/n) or unclean (a0ka/ qarov) and clean, which is maintained by Judaism, ceases to have any divine validity for the conduct of the community.’ 42. Keck, Romans, p. 344. 43. Barclay, ‘“Do we undermine the Law?”’, p. 300. 44. Dunn, Romans 9–16, pp. 818–20, Jewett, Romans, pp. 859–60. Cf. also, R. Bauckham’s discussion of Acts 10.14-15 and 10.28 in ‘Peter, James, and the Gentiles’, in B. Chilton and C. Evans (eds), The Missions of James, Peter, and Paul: Tensions in Early Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 91–142 (esp. 102–03). 45. Bauckham notes the differentiation in Acts 10–11: ‘We may reasonably suppose therefore that, in Acts 10–11, Luke does not couple a0ka/ qartov with koino/ v as synonyms for emphasis, but as distinct, if closely associated, attributes of both impure animals and Gentiles’; ‘Peter, James’, p. 103.

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Saul Olyan maintains that ‘The holy/common distinction establishes a boundary around the sanctuary; the clean/unclean distinction determines who may cross it.’46 Thus the categories holy/profane and pure/impure have something to do with each other but they are not identical. It needs to be noted in particular that ‘holiness’ is not intrinsically related to impure. Nor are profane and impure intrinsically related. What is profane is merely not holy, but that does not render it impure. And what is pure is by no means intrinsically holy. As Olyan has clarified: ‘The category holy cannot exist without the category common … similarly clean cannot exist without unclean … But holy can exist as a distinct category without unclean, demonstrating that the two terms are not inextricably bound to one another.’47 The questions that need to be addressed in relation to the two verses are: (a) how do these categories apply to Gentiles in Christ as Gentiles, that is, as people who have turned away from idols but who are not required to become Jews; (b) what are the implications of this application for the assemblies of Christ-followers? If we take the distinction between the two categories holy/profane and pure/impure into account, how does this impinge on Paul’s use of the term koino/ n in 14.14 and of ka/qara in 14.20? It is difficult to decide whether Paul used koino/v in v. 14 as a synonym for a0ka/ qartov or whether he used it consciously in the sense of profane, meaning to emphasize the difference. The latter possibility should not be ruled out completely and I will subsequently provide an interpretation presupposing Paul used the terminology conscious of the implicit difference between the two categories. 2.2 ‘… Nothing is profane in itself’ (Rom. 14.14) The fact that Paul uses koino/ n here rather than a0 ka/ qarton should at least cause us to pause for a moment before assuming that he simply means the latter using just a different word. Although koino/ v in the first instance refers to that which is profane, accessible, permissible to all, and as such corresponds to lx which denotes that which is not #Odq and its corresponding Greek a3giov, the LXX consistently uses the term be/bhlov when translating lx. Philo follows this tradition of translation and does not use koino/v for ‘profane’. The use of koino/ v in relation to food seems to be a peculiarity of the Maccabean books, but whether it is, as the TDNT suggests, a peculiarity of ‘Jewish soil’ seems difficult to substantiate any further (Jos.Ant 2.346; 3.181; 12.320; 13.3). The evidence does not allow us to come to decisive conclusions. It seems obvious that koino/ v is used with 46. S. Olyan, Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 17. 47. Olyan, Rites and Rank, p. 130, n. 12. Cf. also, J. Dubbnik, ‘Ähnlich und doch ganz anders: Priester und Propheten über die Begriffe Heilig und Unrein’, in Communia Viatorum 50 (1) (2008), pp. 6–19 (esp. 8–9).



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reference to food in Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, which in the more technical sense refers to ‘impure’. But the notion of profane should not be ruled out either, especially when the partial overlap of these two categories is taken into account. There are passages in Acts 10 and 11 which, although post-Pauline, seem to indicate that the terms koino/ v and a0kaqa/ rtov are used in a way that indicates overlap and difference at the same time.48 In Acts 10.14 they are used in relation to eating – although it is unclear whether they are merely meant as duplications or whether there is another emphasis intended. An indication that in my view clarifies the use of the two different terms comes from the following verse (Acts 10.15): ‘a4 o9 qeo\ v e0kaqa/ risen su\ mh\ koi/nou’. This response in Peter’s vision clearly does not relate to food, as is confirmed by Peter’s explanatory address to Cornelius in 10.28: ka0moi _ o9 qeo\ v e1deicen mhde/na koino\n h2 a0ka/ qarton le/gein a1 nqrwpon; here the pair is explicitly related to people. What is implied is that if God himself cleansed Gentiles, they are not merely cleansed from impurity but have now been transformed through the activity of the Holy Spirit from being perceived as profane to a status of holiness and thus are now fit to be part of the community of saints. Using language related to the category of holy/profane in Rom. 14.14 seems to imply that the problem Paul addresses is not in the first instance related to foodstuff – that is, meat and wine – which is consumed or not consumed. The problem he seems to address is not the food itself, but the impact the food-related behaviour of some Christ-followers has on others (and thus on the holiness of the community). The purity/impurity of food is of importance only in relation to this major issue, not as a self-standing problem. Whether Paul emphasized that nothing is ‘profane’ in itself or nothing is impure in itself, this is in both cases far from being a revolutionary statement. Rather, he formulates in accordance with Jewish perceptions that the distinctions between holy and profane and between pure and impure are not essential qualities inherent to whatever is perceived according to these categories, but these categorizations are seen as related to God’s covenant with Israel; they are his ordinances for them. As far as, for example, the purity of animals is concerned, the covenant does not annul the goodness of creation; there is nothing wrong or abominable with animals that are declared ‘impure’. These distinctions are relevant for those who deem them relevant because they are aspects of their identity-shaping relationship with the one God. Such a restricted perspective on the relevance of these distinctions has nothing to do with obliterating or undermining their significance for those for whom they are and remain significant. The nations in this perception are ‘profane’ because they are not part of God’s covenant with his people and thus not ‘holy’, but, again, that in

48.

Cf. Bauckham, n. 45 above.

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and of itself does not render them at fault and it certainly does not render them impure. It could be that Paul specifically uses koino/n here rather than a0ka/ qartov because this is the category that applies to people of the nations/ Gentiles generally. From a Jewish perspective Gentiles are ‘profane’, but they are not inherently ‘impure’. Non-observance of food laws, and laws that are summarized as ‘ritual laws’, do not render Gentiles impure, since these are not meant for them.49 Gentiles become impure, as likewise do Jews, through immoral deeds, with idolatry at the centre of the problem, as Rom. 1.18-32 demonstrates. Thus whilst Gentiles, as worshippers of other gods, are deemed impure, this is not an ontological status inherent to the nature of Gentile people. As non-members of God’s covenant with Israel they are profane; again a status to which no ontological quality is attributed.50 Rather, the categories holy/profane are categories of distinction and with regard to people have an identity-shaping dimension. Such distinctions, however, did not constitute impermeable boundaries between Jews and non-Jews, as evidence for the numerous everyday interactions between them at any period in time demonstrates. With regard to the scriptural tradition, Hayes notes that ‘… not only does the Torah contain no warnings to stay away from non-Israelites lest one contract ritual impurity, it also urges good relations and mutual assistance between Israelites and resident aliens’.51 This continues into the Second Temple period – otherwise the voluntary migration of Jews throughout the Graeco-Roman world would be inexplicable52 – and is supported by literary evidence of the period, such as in 3 Maccabees where it is maintained that differences of food and worship are insignificant compared with the friendship, neighbourhood and business partnerships that exist between Jews and Gentiles.53 Interaction with that 49. Ch. Hayes notes the connection to issues related to identity: ‘Purity and the holiness to which it conduces are covenant notions. Because only God’s covenant partners are obligated to avoid most voluntary ritual impurities and cleanse themselves from unavoidable ritual impurities, Gentiles are by definition exempt from the ritual purity laws …’; Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 20. Cf. most recently, P. Eisenbaum, who follows Hayes in her Paul was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), p. 101 and pp. 153–67. The volume only came to my attention during the final stages of working at this article. 50. Hayes in her discussion of Genesis 1 and 2 notes that ‘the divine–human intimacy in these chapters all but precludes the idea of an intrinsic or ontological impurity that attaches to human beings’; Gentile Impurities, p. 20. 51. Hayes, Gentile Impurities, p. 22. 52. Cf. P. Fredriksen, who notes that: ‘As supporters of Hellenistic regimes, whether as merchants, mercenaries, or regular soldiers, they were willing to move out into the Hellenistic world: Diaspora (‘dispersion’) is not exile’; Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 2008), p. 16; cf. also, pp. 16–24. She further notes that pagans and Gentile Christians were welcomed by synagogue communities well into the third/fourth century (pp. 35–36). 53. Cf. Hayes, Gentile Impurities, p. 49. Hayes lists a number of examples that confirm the lack of intrinsic Gentile impurity: PssSol 17.34; Sir. 36; T. Levi 14.4; Tob. 14.6 (p. 22).



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which is profane is not in any way problematic in everyday life, whether with regard to interaction between Jews and Gentiles or to other aspects as well.54 This is not to deny that there were other Jewish perceptions that were less favourable towards interaction with Gentiles but even these were not ‘based on a desire to avoid a ritual defilement communicated by impure Gentiles’.55 In such a context it can hardly come as a surprise that Paul states that nothing is profane in itself, signalling his familiarity with Jewish perceptions of the time. Thus his use of the word koino/n here could be a deliberate and appropriate choice in that the category ‘profane’ applies generally to people of the nations whereas the term a0ka/ qartov does so only in a specific way (cf. Rom. 1.24). There is one example of such a use of koino/n in the LXX version of the book of Esther, where it clearly refers to Gentiles: ‘ti/ e0stin Esqhr e0gw o0 a0 delfo/ v sou qa/ rsei ou0 mh\ a0poqa/nh| v o[ti koino&n to\ pro/stagma h9mw= n e0stin pro/selqe (5.1 [6]). (‘What is the matter, Esther? I am your brother. Take heart, you are not going to die; our order applies only to ordinary people. Come to me.’) I am aware that this is a small basis for an argument, but I believe it worth asking whether aspects of this meaning may well resonate in Paul’s use in Rom. 14.14, even if not exclusively. The fact that Paul uses the word koino\ n here rather than a0ka/ qartov may indicate that we find an allusion to the pair holy/profane in conjunction with a reference to pure/impure. When Paul states that ‘Nothing is profane in itself but it is only profane for any one who thinks it profane’ he tunes in with a general Jewish perception of the world in terms of the profane/holiness distinction. As mentioned above, these categories are not related to any ontological or ‘natural’56 qualities but to God’s statutes, which are relevant for those who consider themselves in a covenantal relationship with him. The decisive qualification of this statement in Rom. 14.14 comes from Paul’s introduction of the verse ‘I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus’. The relevance of this emphasis should not be seen in a supposed allusion to a Jesus tradition57 but it rather derives from the passage immediately preceding this verse. The statements in vv. 5-12 draw the addressees’ attention to the all-pervasive presence of the Lord. Whatever they do, and wherever they are in their life cycle, as Christ-followers they are in the realm of Christ the Lord. There is no sphere of their lives which is outside of ‘the Lord’. Since, as is generally acknowledged, Paul addresses Gentile Christ-followers here,58 it is 54. For instance, animals that are deemed fit for the purpose of sacrifice are pure, but profane until the moment when they are actually offered as a sacrifice; only then are they considered to be holy. 55. Hayes, Gentile Impurities, p. 50. 56. Cf. M. Douglas note on these distinctions ‘… for anthropologists it is always wrong to take natural as a universal category, forgetting that nature is culturally defined’; Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 144. 57. For arguments supporting a Jesus tradition here see Jewett, Romans, pp. 858–59. 58. Cf. Campbell, ‘The Addressees’, pp. 171–96, also Engberg-Pedersen, ‘“Everything is clean”’, p. 24.

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obvious that he reminds them in particular that to be in Christ means that the divine presence, that is, the presence of the Holy One, permeates their entire lives in all its aspects. This theme was introduced actually at the beginning of chapter 12, where clear indications of a holiness discourse are found. It is a discourse that shows striking similarity with themes combined in Leviticus 19, to the extent that part of Romans 12–13 almost read like a commentary on/homily to Leviticus 19. As those who are in Christ, the addressees are reminded that they have to aspire to be holy; they are admonished ‘… to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God’ (12.1b), which corresponds with them being addressed already in Rom. 1.7 as ‘called to be the saints’. Thus, similar to Israel at Mount Sinai, these, as the called in Christ, are now in the realm of God, the Holy One, who calls them to be holy (Lev. 19.2b). Paul repeatedly admonishes the addressees in chapter 12 to love and honour one another, to contribute to the needs of the saints and to practise hospitality (12.9-13). After his excursus on how to relate to state authorities he returns to this emphasis on love in directly quoting Lev. 19.18 (13.9). It is interesting to note that the discourse in Leviticus 19 begins with an appeal to the holiness of the people ‘You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy’ (Lev. 19.2) to which Paul’s appeal in 12.1-2 sounds like a parallel, or a variation of the tune. One of the basic requirements of ‘holiness’ is separation and distinctive behaviour in relation to other peoples. In Leviticus this emphasis is found in close literary proximity to chapter 19, for example in 18.2 where the Israelites are required not to ‘do as they do’.59 After his initial reference to holiness, Paul reminds the community that they should ‘not be conformed to this world’ (12.2a), which implies that as part of this community Christ-followers should develop an identity distinct from ‘this world’. What follows in Leviticus 19 is a reminder of a mixture of laws, ritual and ethical, emphasizing that ‘holiness’ is not confined to the boundaries of the sanctuary and that of the cult but expands into ‘the everyday life of common people’.60 This aspect strikingly corresponds with Paul’s emphasis in Rom. 12.3-21 on support, care and love for the neighbour, and beyond, as that which is required of, and characterizes, the holy community (Lev. 19.9-10, 13-14, 15-18, 33-34). These requirements could thus be described as the identity markers now not only of Israel but of the Christ-following community ‘called to be saints’ as well. This discourse of holiness is the immediate and wider context, which I think impinges on the verse in question. Paul emphasizes in 14.14a that in the realm of the Lord Jesus – that is, in a sphere now under God’s sovereignty and thus holiness – nothing and no one is profane any more. Only if someone considers anything or anyone to be still outside this realm is this so. As part of the Christ-movement, Gentiles in Christ are not ‘profane’ people from among the nations any more. They are supposed to have ‘turned 59. 60.

T. M. Wills, Leviticus (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2009), p. 171. Cf. Wills, Leviticus, p. 165.



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away from idols to the true and living God’ (1 Thess. 1.9), and as such they are supposed to have ceased from committing morally impure actions, hence Paul’s reminder that they should ‘not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind’ (12.2). In Christ they have turned away from actions that, according to Jewish perception, rendered Gentiles impure; that is, first and most important from idolatry and following from this from immoral deeds that rendered them unfit (like Jews who committed such deeds) to come close to the realm of the holy. In Christ they were now morally pure. As such, through being in Christ, they were now in a state in which they could come close to the realm of the holy without risk. This, however, does not mean that they would need to adhere to ritual purity laws, as these are only meant for Jews and are part of Jewish identity. Gentiles have to abstain from idolatry and morally defiling actions.61 This is what is required of them to be eligible as Gentiles to be part of the community of the saints. The key issues thus for these Gentiles in Christ are not ritual purity regulations but their change in status from ‘profane’ to ‘holy’, which may well be indicated by Paul’s use of koino&n here. As Fredriksen formulates it: ‘… through Christ, in the Spirit, these Gentiles are no longer common (‫ )חול‬but holy (‫ )קדש‬and thus suitable to be brought close to holiness’.62 Evidence for this change of status is that they have turned away from idols and immoral actions.63 A scenario could be envisaged in Rome where some Jews, whether Christfollowers or not, and possibly some Gentiles (god-fearers) could not accept that Gentiles are purified through their association with Christ and thus ‘fit’ for being in the realm of the God of Israel through Christ – that is, in the sphere of holiness – but who perceived them to be either still profane or even impure, despite being in Christ. Within the Christ-movement one could envisage a number of reasons for such a perception; one of these could be doubts as to whether these Gentiles had completely turned away from idols and immoral behaviour. With regard to meat eating, there is only an issue when, as in 1 Corinthians 8–10, meat has been involved in sacrifice, or (to a lesser extent)

61.

Cf. Hayes, who notes that:

… moral impurity, being conditioned on behaviour, is entirely avoidable. Gentiles no less than Israelites, are capable of refraining from those sinful acts that generate moral impurity. Thus, to the degree that the distinction between Jew and Gentile was perceived a moral distinction, to that degree the boundary between Jew and Gentile could be crossed as Gentiles abandoned idolatry and immorality and adopted the behavioural norms of Jewish culture and identity. (Gentile Impurities, p. 193) 62. Fredriksen, ‘Paul, Purity and the Gentiles’, p. 213. This aspect is actually emphasized in Acts 10–11 where Gentiles, not food, is the focus of the narrative; it is Gentiles in Christ, rather than food, who are declared to be neither profane nor impure in joining the assembly of God (Acts 10.28). 63. Cf. also, C. Roetzel, Paul: The Man and the Myth (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999), p. 105.

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when it is meat from an animal deemed impure, most likely pork.64 Although sacrifice is the most likely source of meat where it was part of the menu in antiquity, Paul does not address this particular aspect here. The issue of food only comes into play in relation to the main concern of holiness. The food the ‘strong’ Gentiles may eat could cause the stumbling of a brother or sister. To act in a way that harms the brother or sister constitutes an immoral deed, and the impurity that is associated with such a deed, classified as sin, thus threatens to profane the holy community, that is, threatens to ‘blaspheme your good’ (14.16). The major problem associated here with eating is not the foodstuff that is consumed; meat and vegetables are not the question, but the injuring of the brother or sister caused by refusing to be attentive to the very understandable injury such an act could have for someone else. In the reading proposed here, it is evident that Paul does not in principle ‘undermine the law’,65 or even declare part of the law, as related to food, to be irrelevant in Christ. Paul rather argues within the parameters of Jewish reasoning. He is talking about the realm in which those who are in Christ now live, that is, the realm of a holy community. The food laws, and purity laws more generally, have something to do with this realm, but in different ways for Jews and Gentiles. It certainly does not imply that Paul denies the validity of food laws in Christ. The issue is something else. That which actually threatens the realm of holiness in Christ is neither adherence nor non-adherence to the law, neither eating nor not-eating, but ‘injuring the brother and sister’. The repeated emphasis on ‘love’ in the previous chapters of Romans clearly resonates here. ‘Not to walk in love’ is that which ‘blasphemes’/‘profanes’ the ‘good’. It constitutes an immoral act over against members of the community and, as such, threatens the holiness of the entire community through the impurity emanating from such an act.66 The most significant values in this movement of Jews and Gentiles are peace and what contributes to mutual upbuilding. The food laws are not seen as a hindrance to achieve this, but conflict around food issues does cause a serious problem. Significantly, Paul does not call the covenant obligations for Jews adiaphora;67 to the contrary, they are inviolable in Christ, and if people are injured because of an ambiguity in how to evaluate Gentiles’ eating practices in a context of mutual hospitality, Paul clearly emphasizes the necessity to accommodate the needs of the ‘one for whom Christ died’, not out of pity, or out of tolerance, but because of the necessity to ‘pursue what makes for peace’. This peace is not built on the eventual requirement to move beyond the Torah and form a uniform identity in Christ. It is not built 64. On the popularity of pork in Roman cuisine cf. M. Corbier, ‘The Broad Bean and the Moray: Social Hierarchies and Food in Rome’, in J. L. Flandrin and M. Montanari (eds), Food: A Culinary History (New York: Penguin, 2000), pp. 128–40 (esp. 133). 65. Contra Barclay; cf. n. 3 above. 66. Cf. also, Eisenbaum, Paul was Not a Christian, p. 157. 67. Also emphasized by Käsemann, An die Römer, p. 360, Jewett, Romans, p. 860; Engberg-Pedersen, ‘“Everything is clean”’, p. 36; and, prominently, Campbell, Paul, pp. 104–20.



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on a temporary tolerance of those in power, who already know better than ‘the weak’.68 It is built on the strengthening of the identity of all involved here, the ones who eat and the ones who do not eat and who thus in their different ways ‘serve Christ’; as servants of Christ in their diversity, they are thus ‘acceptable to God and approved by men’ (14.18). This is the basis on which peace, joy and mutual upbuilding can grow. The diversity in practice within the movement becomes evident in relation to eating and drinking and is confirmed by Paul here, in that he has made it clear that whatever is done in honour of God and service of Christ is acceptable to God. Read in this vein, Paul then does not see a problem with food laws, nor does he make any statement that indicates their irrelevance, but he does make a strong statement against that which does actually threaten the holiness of the community ‘called to be saints’, that is, disrespect for the brother and sister and his/her vulnerability. ‘Not walking in love’ means to behave in a way that still conforms to ‘this world’ (12.2), ‘this world’ meaning ‘outside the realm of Christ’.69 He formulates the relevance of such behaviour not in emotional or ethical terminology but in a rather ‘Levitical’ vein and emphasizes that such ‘causing the brother/sister to stumble’ inflicts moral impurity on the violator, and thus risks the profaning and hence blaspheming of God and ‘the community of saints’. Holiness is thus seen by Paul to be a decisive identity-shaping aspect of the community. The maintenance of holiness implies to some extent different things. Adherence to the Torah in its identity-shaping significance for Jews is not questioned by Paul, nor whatever constitutes characteristics of Gentile identity as long as this did not involve idol worship and behaviour associated with it. Thus it can be assumed that Paul also affirmed aspects of Gentile identity in Christ that did not contradict the message of the gospel (e.g. 1 Thess. 5.21, Phil. 4.8).70 The particular identities of Jews and Gentiles in Christ are not a threat to holiness and to peace, joy and harmony within the community; they are rather presupposed. Holiness is lived in diversity and, as such, constitutes nevertheless the ‘universal’ identity-shaping category for both Jews and Gentiles in Christ. 2.3 ‘Everything is indeed pure’ (14.20) Although in this passage Paul clearly refers to the categories of the Jewish purity system, insights gained from the analysis of 14.14 are relevant here too. Since the issue under discussion is directly related to food and drink, pa/ nta me\n kaqara/ here most likely refers specifically to foodstuff. If we presuppose that Paul’s perception here is embedded in GraecoRoman and Jewish understandings of purity issues rather than that he is 68. Contra, for example, Engberg-Pedersen, ‘“Everything is clean”’, pp. 34–35. 69. Cf. also, Eisenbaum, Paul was Not a Christian, pp. 160–61. 70. Cf. J. B. Tucker, ‘You Belong to Christ’: Paul and the Formation of Social Identity in 1 Corinthians 1–4 (PhD thesis; University of Wales, Lampeter, 2009 ; published Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010).

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stating something revolutionary or breathtaking that is foreign to Jewish tradition, then this implies that he merely states what everybody knows anyway. ‘Everything is indeed pure’ refers to Jewish perceptions of purity and impurity as non-ontological categories, but as God’s ordinances, his Torah for his people. A tradition attributed to Jochanan ben Zakkai formulates: ‘In your life, it is not the corpse that defiles … and not the water that cleanses … it is the ordinance of the King of all Kings.’71 Read in this context, Paul quite unspectacularly merely states what is the Jewish perception in this matter: the Jewish food laws of course are regulations related to God’s covenant with the people Israel. That ‘the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it’ (Ps. 25.1) is not questioned in any way by the setting of the laws that regulate which parts of God’s creation are at the disposition of the people Israel.72 The impure animals are impure for the covenant people, as is emphasized in an almost mantra-like manner in Leviticus 11: ‘it is unclean/impure for you (11.4, 5, 6, 7); ‘they are unclean for you’ (11.8); ‘they are untouchable for you’ (11.10-11, 12, 23) etc. As with other purity regulations, these apply to the covenant partner Israel and not to the nations. Gentiles are not required to keep purity laws, particularly not (all of) those that are related to ritual impurity, as these are only relevant for Jews in their relationship with God.73 Although directly dealing with the issue of different perceptions concerning food, confirming that these categorizations only apply to those who deem them relevant, thus not for Gentiles, Paul’s emphasis even here again is not on this specific difference as the factor that causes a real problem. In this verse, as in v. 14, the holiness and unity of the community is threatened by actions, that is, the eating of food by Gentiles that in the eyes of Jews or Gentiles who adhere to Jewish traditions is not pure beyond doubt. This injures the brother/sister, and doing harm to the other is, as we have seen above, an act that profanes the holiness of the community through the transmission of moral impurity. Clearly, Paul refers to the purity of food mentioned earlier in this verse. He uses the common technical term for purity, ka/ qarov, in a context where food and drink as means for providing hospitality are discussed directly. As indicated above, the addressees in this passage are Gentiles.74 Thus what Paul formulates here is not a general statement about the perception of food, but a specific statement addressed to specific people in a specific context. Food laws are part of the rules that regulate ritual purity for those under the covenant. Non-adherence to these laws does not render Gentiles impure or sinners, because they are irrelevant for them from a Jewish perspective. The division of animals according to purity categories is thus irrelevant for Gentiles. ‘For them’ the food laws do not apply. Thus, ‘for them’ all food is 71. Peski/40b. 72. Cf. Douglas, Leviticus, p. 136. 73. Cf. Eisenbaum, Paul was Not a Christian, pp. 100–01. 74. Cf. Campbell, ‘The Addressees’; also Engberg-Pedersen, ‘“Everything is clean”’, pp. 23–34.



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pure. Paul, in addressing non-Jews, is arguing in a Levitical vein here. The pure/impure categorization of animals and the admonition to observe these laws is addressed to the covenant people, that is, these animals are impure ‘for you’ – the addressees of Leviticus. It follows they are not impure for non-Jews, who are addressed here by Paul, thus, for them, everything is pure. This does not mean that everything is to be considered pure by Jews in Christ, and the food laws are by no means abolished for Jews. Paul just confirms that the general Jewish perception concerning these laws in relation to Gentiles applies also to Gentiles who are now in Christ. The Jewish distinctions relevant for Jews do not apply to Gentiles in Christ. This cannot be otherwise. If they were to adhere to Jewish food laws now that they are in Christ this would actually mean they would be required to take on Jewish identity. This is precisely, however, what Paul in other contexts and discussing other issues opposes. Gentiles in Christ should under no circumstances aspire to become Jews. Not because there is anything wrong with Judaism or the Torah, nor because the Torah is actually obsolete and it is only a matter of time until its validity for Jews is overcome, but because in the eschatological time inaugurated by the coming of Christ, Jews and Gentiles together will with ‘one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’. If in Christ, Gentiles were to become Jews it would be impossible for Gentiles as Gentiles to rejoice with his people! There would be no Gentiles to rejoice since there would only be one kind of people, Jews. Thus, in Christ, for the Gentiles eating their kind of food is not an issue, because in that context, for them, everything can be perceived as being the Lord’s and thus pure (cf. Rom. 14.6-8). This does not render such food pure for Jews, as for them the identity-shaping covenantal obligation does not become void in Christ. But the fact that they are now in Christ renders Gentiles who eat their kind of food (e.g. pork75) nevertheless acceptable as part of the community who are ‘called to be saints’. Thus, v. 20 is an assertion and confirmation of Gentiles’ identity as Gentiles in Christ, but not a break with the law or an indication that Paul advocated that Jewish identity was eventually obsolete in Christ. It is at the same time an assertion and confirmation of the Jews’ identity as Jews in Christ. The problem Paul addresses is obviously related to the provision of hospitality. The great length at which he writes about this issue may have to do with the sensitivity it has for Paul in particular, since he had the experience of the breaking-up of table-fellowship possibly early on in his career in Antioch (Gal. 2.11-14). I cannot discuss this major aspect in detail here but a possible scenario in Rome could be as follows: the food and wine that some Gentiles may have consumed at the shared table may have raised doubts among other Christ-followers, Gentiles or not, as to whether these ‘eaters’ actually had transformed and now conformed to life in Christ. The 75. The issue of idol food is complex, as Paul’s discussion of the issue in 1 Corinthians 8–10 demonstrates.

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discourse in which Paul describes this transformation is the Levitical holiness discourse. The doubts raised concerned the identity of the ‘eaters’ as people who were supposed to be holy. Such doubt could have led either to the breaking-up of the table-fellowship or to pressure on those who had their doubts about these Gentile ‘eaters’ to suppress their concerns; thus some ‘doubters’ could have felt obliged to eat without being confident that they did the right thing. Thus the food Gentiles may have eaten/brought to the table may have caused a brother/sister to stumble and do something that was not done ‘in faith’. The eating practice of Gentiles, which Paul acknowledges as entirely appropriate and in accordance with Gentile identity in Christ, nevertheless in certain situations threatens the holiness of the whole community because by it the brother/sister may be injured. In order to maintain righteousness, peace and joy, and thus the status of holiness among the Roman Christ-followers, Paul thus admonishes the Gentiles, whose identity he has just confirmed, to accommodate with their eating practices to the needs of the brother/sister and thereby enable mutual hospitality based on faith for everybody (Rom. 12.13).76 This does not mean that Gentiles are required to adhere to the food laws; they are admonished to accommodate not because the food laws are ‘for them’, but out of concern for the ‘brother for whom Christ died’, that is, in conforming to a life in which the imitation of Christ is the guiding parameter. T. Engberg-Pedersen has drawn attention to the careful way in which Paul argues here. Engberg-Pedersen works out how Paul attempts to get the Gentiles to understand that it is right in this case to adhere to Jewish food laws, not because these laws are binding for them, but out of concern for the unity and holiness of the community.77 But, contra Engberg-Pedersen, in my view this admonishment to accommodation has nothing to do with a perception of food laws, and the Jews’ concern for these, as being wholly unjustified. They are justified in as much as the Gentiles’ non-adherence to these laws is justified, since in the service of Christ both practices are ‘accepted by God and approved by men’ (14.18) . For Jews their practice is part of their abiding loyalty to the covenant of God with them, which is not annulled through their participation in Christ, and for Gentiles their practice is similarly confirmation that now in Christ they as Gentiles live, in association with Israel, as holy people of God. 3. Conclusion Paul’s concern for peace and joy among the Christ-followers in Rome and their continued table-fellowship is expressed as a concern for the holiness of the community in Rom. 14.1–15.13. Christ-followers are called to be saints, as Paul emphasizes in his greeting at the beginning of the letter. In the realm of Christ, Gentiles who previously were considered profane and 76. 77.

Cf. my Mutually Encouraged, pp. 181–89. Engberg-Pedersen, ‘“Everything is clean”’, p. 36.



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impure are now sanctified, together with Jews. This messianic community, which in its internal diversity lives in anticipation of the world to come, is supposed to be holy, to live a life in holiness. Purity is an issue when one enters the realm of the holy, but it is an issue in different ways for people who are and remain different. Thus the holiness of the community is under threat of being profaned not by food and drink, nor by the food laws for that matter, but by actions that harm the ‘brother for whom Christ died’. Such actions render the doer impure and this defilement threatens the holiness of the community of saints. This is the focus of Paul’s argument in 14.1–15.13. In this context the purity issues concerning food are of relevance given that the closest possible expression of unity of those who are and remain different in Christ – that is, the provision of hospitality at the table – is at stake. But, far from advocating the relativization of Jewish identity, Paul here affirms and strengthens the particular identity of both Jews and Gentiles in Christ. The identity-shaping characteristic shared by both in Christ is their status of holiness. The unity in diversity and mutual respect is fundamental for the holiness of the community of Christ-followers, who are called to welcome each other for the glory of God.

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Chapter 7

Paul

and

Nomos

in the

Messianic Age

Calvin J. Roetzel A generation after the appearance of his little book Torah in the Messianic Age/or Age to Come,1 and Morton Smith’s unflattering JBL review a year later,2 W. D. Davies never returned to the topic again. But, the issue stuck in his mind for decades, soaking up resonances from the scholarly discussions on the Qumran writings and the literature of the Israelite diaspora community. Finally, 36 years after the book appeared (1952) he returned to the topic in an obscure footnote:3 ‘The whole question [of Torah in the Messianic Age] needs to be reopened in the light of 11Qtemple.’ Noting Wacholder’s suggestion that the ‘sectarians’ at Qumran intended that the Torah be a new Torah superseding the canonical Pentateuch, Davies thought the time was ripe for a reconsideration of his earlier ill-fated thesis.4 He had learned much from its chilly reception. He was more keenly aware of the anachronism of the first volume, namely his attempted use of third-century rabbinic materials to decipher first-century texts. As Davies scribed his note, Martin Hengel was at work on his PreChristian Paul5 in which he, in an appended note of his own, expressed his disgust over the prolonged discussion of Paul and Torah and/or law. Hengel wrote: ‘This is surely a reflection of the present situation in research, which is concerned ad nauseam with Paul’s understanding of the law but reflects very little on Paul the Pharisee in this connection.’6 Granting that considerations of the law and Pharisaism are hardly as easily separated as Hengel allowed, a 1. W. D. Davies, Torah in the Messianic Age and/or Age to Come (Philadelphia, PA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1952). 2. M. Smith, review of Torah in the Messianic Age and/or Age to Come, in JBL 72/3 (1953), pp. 192–94. 3. W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Jr, Matthew 1–7: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (ICC, 1; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 493, n. 28. 4. B. Z. Wacholder, The Dawn of Qumran: The Sectarian Torah and the Teacher of Righteousness (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1983), pp. 1–32. 5. M. Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul (Philadelphia, PA: Trinity Press International, 1991), p. 87, n. 2. 6. Ibid.

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cursory survey of the secondary literature will identify the source of Hengel’s nausea. In the bloated body of articles and books that Hengel decried, there were works on the law as sacred violence, on the law as a servant of the gospel, on the law as a tyrant, on the law as a bad guide, on the law as preparation for Christ, and on the law as an interim measure whose goal was Christ.7 There were essays on the fulfilment of law, the abolition of law, and the relevance of law and the irrelevance of law. The notes of Hengel and Davies thus stand juxtaposed; as confusing and even contradictory, as was much of the scholarly work on law by scholars like Montefiore, Deissman, Schweitzer, Schoeps, Davies, George Foot Moore, Munck, Stendahl, Dahl, Meyer, Gaston, the seminar of the Canadian scholars, Westerholm, Winger, Gager, and the person to whom this Festschrift is rightly dedicated.8 Into this morass of secondary opinion, E. P. Sanders’ brilliant work Paul and Palestinian Judaism:A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (627 pages!) focused the debate. The agenda Sanders set for himself in the preface to his groundbreaking work signalled that his treatment was a rock ’em, sock ’em, take no prisoners, knock down and drag out campaign that made no pretence of being dispassionate. Yet, in fairness, his work was no impressionistic, ideological tantrum. Even his critics – e.g. Neusner, Räisänen, Dunn, and Bill Campbell also – acknowledged the significance of Sanders’ work. While Sanders was criticized for his anachronistic reliance on late rabbinic sources, few took exception to his withering critique of the who’s who of an earlier generation of Protestant scholars for its caricature of Judaism as a debased, legalistic religion bent on securing righteousness by works before a stern, book-keeping God. The most provocative part of Sanders’ work perhaps was his discussion of the pattern of religion in Paul. Relying on the work of Schweitzer in particular and ironically on that of Davies, his teacher, Sanders argued that Paul’s emphasis on righteousness by faith was the functional equivalent of participation in Christ.9 And, though Sanders was aware that the juxtaposition of the juristic and participationist categories is nowhere explicitly mentioned in Paul’s letters, he was so certain that the participationist emphasis was the key to understanding Paul’s thinking that he boldly stated: ‘Once we make the distinction between juristic and participationist categories … there is no doubt that the latter tell us more about the way Paul “really” thought’ (my emphasis).10 Although Hays

7. For fuller description see my ‘Paul and the Law: Whence and Whither?’, Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 3 (1995), pp. 249–75. 8. It is an honour indeed to pay tribute to Bill Campbell, whose energetic and seminal mind has done much to enrich the great collegium of Pauline scholars and who has also somehow found time to entertain and welcome the strangers within his gate. 9. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1977), p. 506. 10. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, pp. 259–62.



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and Stowers later disagreed about the nature of Paul’s understanding of ‘participation in Christ’, they both acknowledged its importance.11 While Sanders grants that the apostle Paul did appropriate some juristic features from Judaism, he saw little evidence that Jewish apocalyptic thinking impacted Paul. In his own words, Sanders offers that the ‘hypothesis might be put forward that before his conversion [sic] and call Paul was not especially apocalyptically oriented’.12 Yet this scepticism about the early impact of apocalypticism on Paul’s early thinking is at best a guess. His later pervasive and creative appropriation and adaptation of Jewish apocalyptic thinking suggests to me a more extended exposure.13 Sanders’ position then, that Paul’s religion was essentially discontinuous with that of his mother faith, finds a bold expression in Sanders’ remark that ‘Paul presents an essentially different type of religiousness from any found in Palestinian Jewish Literature’.14 The question is worth raising: how different is different? If Paul’s Denkweise was thoroughly apocalyptic, then Sanders’ position needs some correction.15 I go with Christiaan Beker and others, who have argued that the organizing centre of Paul’s vision of the dawn of a ‘new creation’ was apocalyptic, and that apocalypticism was the engine that drove Paul’s apostolic mission, that informed his gospel, and that energized his defence.16 Beker, however, was influenced by the radical position taken by the Nobel Laureate, Albert Schweitzer, who succinctly noted that Paul is convinced … that the Law can only remain in force up to the beginning of the Messianic Kingdom. And since he holds that the Elect, so soon as they are ‘in Christ’, no longer belong to the natural, but henceforth to the Messianic world, he is necessarily led to the conclusion that they are now no longer under the Law … Paul sacrificed the Law to eschatology; Judaism abandoned eschatology and retained the Law.17

11. Both articles appear in F. E. Udoh, S. Heschel, M. Chancey and G. Tatum (eds), Redefining First-century Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of Ed Parish Sanders (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998). See articles by S. K. Stowers, ‘What is Pauline Participation in Christ?’ and R. B. Hays, ‘What is Real Participation in Christ? A Dialogue with E. P. Sanders on Pauline Soteriology’, ad loc. 12. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p. 543. 13. See Roetzel, ‘Paul as Organic Intellectual: Reshaping Jewish Apocalyptic Myth from the Margins’, in C. J. Roetzel, Paul: A Jew on the Margins (Louisville, KY: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 2003), pp. 19–37. 14. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p. 543. 15. I cannot digress to argue this point here. I have joined others elsewhere, and Bill Campbell as well, to make this point. The most sustained treatment was perhaps that of J. Christiaan Beker. 16. J. C. Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980). But see also the seminal work of E. Käsemann, ‘The Beginnings of Christian Theology’, in New Testament Questions of Today (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1969), pp. 162–85. 17. A. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (trans. W. Montgomery; 2nd edn; New York: Macmillan, 1955), p. 192.

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While the discovery and interpretation of the Qumran scrolls has proven that Schweitzer’s assertion that Judaism [sing. sic] abandoned eschatology was historically false, his assertion that Paul had no intention of creating a new religion has proven to be correct. And his insistence that the dawn of the messianic age shifted the centre of gravity in Paul’s ancestral religion has also proven to be correct. He was correct likewise to note that Paul’s feverish expectation of the parousia of Messiah Jesus, his inclusive gospel, his emphasis on participation in Christ, and the Spirit informed all of Paul’s thought. The apocalyptic narrative into which Paul felt inserted by God, and the critique of his gainsayers, tended to make him a marginal figure, but the margin he inhabited as an apocalyptic visionary filled that margin with radical possibility. Moreover, if Paul did inherit an apocalyptic Denkweise he did more than simply swallow it whole and at once with no questions asked; his fertile mind reshaped and reinterpreted it to give it practical issue.18 In Paul’s own reconfiguration of nomos in the messianic age, his creative and ingenious thinking did much to shape the vision and writings of the early Jesus movement, to create a surrogate family for uprooted Gentile converts, to shape the identity of the eschatological Christ-movement, and to redefine the trauma of the end-time (2 Cor. 11.21b–12.10). Paul’s formative years were spent in a context deeply rooted in a profoundly Hellenized Judaism that shaped and informed his construction of a nomos in the messianic age. Like other apocalyptic myths of his day, Paul’s was fraught with tension: tension between this world as known through suffering and incompleteness and the coming world apprehended through apocalyptic myth and metaphor; tension between a disenchantment rising from the fractured world in Satan’s grasp and a still greater enchantment that expected liberation from the clutches of dark sinister powers. In this world of incompleteness, pain, alienation, deprivation, suffering and loss, Paul’s reshaped messianic-apocalyptic myths offered hope, dramatic and cosmic change, and a radical, revolutionary and even convulsive inversion of fates. The dynamic blend of this Christcentred apocalyptic myth and Hellenistic philosophy and religion shaped Paul’s innovative and radical revisioning of nomos in the messianic age. Even though his instincts were sound, Schweitzer’s virtual ignorance of this dynamic interaction caused distortions that compromised his work. Hengel’s early argument that there was no Judaism free of Hellenistic influence, quite against his wishes, may have discouraged studies that there was no qualitative difference between Palestinian and Hellenistic interpretations of law.19 While it is true that there was no absolute dichotomy between the religions of Palestine and the diaspora, it is also true that there were differences of degree if not of kind between them. Let us turn now to differences of nuance framed by the world Paul inhabited.

18. See Roetzel, ‘Paul as Organic Intellectual’, pp. 19–37. 19. M. Hengel, Hellenism and Judaism (trans. J. Bowden; 2 vols; Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1974).



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1. Paul and Qumran: Nomos in the Messianic Age First, let us note the work on the Qumran scrolls to which Davies alluded. Not only the work of Wacholder, but more recently that of Alex Jassen, lend weight to Davies’ suggestion.20 Jassen finds reason in 4Q Testimonia 175 and 1QS 9.11 for a return to the issue of Torah in the messianic age and/or age to come. He shows that at Qumran some of the ‘sectarians’21 held that in the endtimes, ‘the prophet’ would bring a new law to replace the old (my emphasis). Jassen notes that 4Q Testimonia 175 and 1QS 9.11 are best read against the background provided by the MT of Deut. 5.23-31. This background text allows us to overhear the divine restrictions when Moses learned that he would never enter the promised land, and though he would never enter the land, he would receive commandments (mitzwoth), statutes (hachukim), and ordinances (mishpatim) and would teach them to the people of Israel that ‘they may do them in the land which I give them to possess’ (MT of Deut. 5.28-29, Eng. 5.30-31). Then, in a different text in the MT, namely Deut. 18.18-22, Moses heard the promise that when the people come into the land, ‘I will raise up for them a prophet (nabi) like you from among this brethren and I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them’ (my emphasis). Later writers combined these two traditions found in the background texts into a single narrative. The Samaritan Pentateuch of Exod. 20.21-22, for example, blends the two to suggest that when Moses drew near in the thick darkness where God was: the Lord spoke to Moses, saying [Deut. 5.28-29], I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you; they have rightly said all that they have spoken. O, that they had such a mind as this always, to fear me and to keep my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their children for ever [Deut. 18.18-22]. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among the brethren; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he will speak to them all that I command him … (My emphasis)22

Jassen notes that although fragments of the Samaritan Pentateuch do appear at Qumran, we cannot know with any certainty that the ‘sectarians’ had a copy of this passage. We do know, however, that this combination was taking place, and that the same combination occurs in 4Q Testimonia 175. What is new there, [however], is the overlay of an apocalyptic myth. As Jassen has it, the prophet in Deut. 5.25-26 and 18.18-19 seems ‘to be entrusted with the task of transforming law at the end of days’.23 Jassen then concludes: ‘Presumably, at that time the former laws will become obsolete under the legislative direction of the expected prophet.’ Noted especially in 1QS 9.11: 20. A. P. Jassen, Mediating the Divine: Prophecy and Revelation in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 21. Because of the pejorative nuance the word carries, I use this term with some misgiving, but for the sake of convenience I use it nevertheless. 22. Jassen, Mediating the Divine, p. 160. 23. Jassen, Mediating the Divine, p. 175.

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Their goods must not be mixed with the goods of the men of deceit who have not cleansed their path separate from injustice and walk in a perfect behaviour. They should not depart from any counsel of the law in order to walk in complete stubbornness of their heart, but instead shall be ruled by the first directives which the men of the Community began to be taught until the prophet comes, and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel.24 (My emphasis once more)

If Jassen is correct, the view of these texts is that the eschatological age will ‘witness a dramatic shift in the understanding and application of law. This legal framework associated with the “first precepts” will be erased in the eschatological age and be replaced by a new set of laws and ordinances.’25 Thus Jassen’s study offers important implications for an understanding of Paul’s revision of law in the messianic age. There is no gainsaying Jassen’s point that a significant rethinking of Torah was going on in the light of the anticipated apocalyptic dawn at Qumran. If Jassen is correct, then the Qumran revisions were so radical that they excited resistance from other competing interpreters, e.g., some of the Jerusalem priestly community. This hardly suggests that Paul knew the Qumran sectarians or was a member of the community, as Pinchas Lapide once asserted,26 but it shows that there was an apocalyptic vision abroad that allowed for a radical revision of Torah in the ‘end-times’, and although Paul was a creature of the diaspora, his community could hardly have been culturally isolated from religious and apocalyptic speculation in Jewish apocalyptic circles. Paul’s context and apocalyptic convictions doubtless informed his revaluation when added to his rhetorical use and/or devaluation of nomos, and shed new light on what Räisänen calls Paul’s purposeful distortions and ‘contradictions’ in his interpretation of the law. These multiple revisions already underway in the Judaisms of Paul’s day should serve as a cautionary tale against referring to the ‘law’ or Torah as if that signifier pointed to a uniform, static reality. Even Philo’s later insistence on the fundamental unchanging character of law and legal interpretation was less a historical statement of fact than a critique of certain ‘dangerous’ innovations and accommodations he witnessed in the diaspora.27 Thus, Philo’s own improvisations belied his rhetorical appeal.28 For, as a thinker with a cosmopolitan vision, Philo knew better than most 24. Translation by G. Vermes, Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin, 2004). 25. Jassen, Mediating the Divine, p. 170. 26. P. Lapide, Paulus zwischen Damaskus und Qumran (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1993, 1995, 2001). 27. See his Mos. 2.14, where he says of the permanent unchanging character of Moses words: ‘his laws, firm unshaken, immovable, stamped, as it were, with the seals of nature herself, remain secure from the day when they were first enacted to now …’ 28. For example, Philo’s description of Mosaic law as a perfect copy of the unwritten, invisible, eternal law bears at least a family resemblance to the Platonic vision of the relationship of the concrete to the eternal, divine world of forms. See my ‘Ambivalence and Ambiguity on the Margins’, in Paul: A Jew on the Margins (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2003), p. 61.



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that changing circumstances, historical crises, violent challenges to identity formation and maintenance required fresh appraisals and applications. Even when Philo insisted that the Law of Moses was a perfect copy of the one eternal, unchanging law of nature, such a claim bolstered a sense of superiority that aimed to secure the identity of this underdog, minority diaspora community. From his Hellenized adaptations we learn that Philo’s masterful reinterpretation of nomos was very context sensitive and pliable. The Qumran scrolls, the writings of the diaspora, and the Pauline letters, this chapter will advocate, all either in belief or practice hold an understanding of nomos that is flexible, or at times even unstable or contradictory. Second, the highly innovative versions of nomos with practical issue that sprang from the diaspora destabilized established positions, and led to a period of radical and creative revisioning. When one turns to the diaspora, perhaps no community offers more information for our study than that of Alexandria, Egypt, and no first-century Jewish interpreter offers a more useful window onto the contours and character of that Israelite community than does Philo Judaeus, a rough contemporary of Paul. Questions have arisen about the relevance of Philo’s work for a consideration of the wider diaspora, and, given the contradictions in his work, one must be cautious. Nevertheless, the synthetic and eclectic character of Philo’s understanding of nomos was informed by his knowledge of the traditions of the Israelite religion and he was especially attuned to the special problems facing his minority and sometimes oppressed diaspora community. Moreover, it is now known that there were significant cultural and material exchanges between Philo’s Alexandria and Tarsus, the presumed birthplace and home of Paul. Although the challenges to identity formation and maintenance facing Israelite communities in the diaspora were hardly confined to Alexandria, the Jewish community there does leave us our most complete record.29 The broad outlines of Philo’s life and times are well known and hardly need reciting here, but his embrace of Hellenistic culture, his participation in the political process, his attendance at cultural events, and his resistance to the Roman hegemony offer a useful record of the negotiation of the sometimes conflicting demands made by the Graeco-Roman culture and those of his native religion. Moreover, his knowledge of Greek philosophical and literary traditions offers a record of the reach of the Hellenistic environment he inhabited. He cites, for example, Homer’s Iliad (On the Confusion of Tongues, 170). He quotes Menander (Heres, 5), he was familiar with the Odyssey (De Fuga, 63), he recalled Euripedes’ Phoenissae (Joseph, 78), and elsewhere he referred to his acquaintance with Diogenes, Empedocles, Democritus and Demosthenes. His acquaintance with philosophical trends is evident in his knowledge of the Stoics, Cynics, Neo-Pythagoreans, Epicureans, Platonists and Aristotelians. While no similar claims can be made for Paul, he could hardly have been insulated from the philosophical influences writ large in the works of Philo and current in Tarsus. And although Philo’s understanding of nomos 29.

See, Roetzel, ‘Ambivalence and Ambiguity on the Margins’, pp. 50–65, esp. 62.

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was multi-faceted it reveals the impact that Hellenistic thinking exerted in a setting not so far from Paul. Philo’s cultural habitat influenced his thinking about nomos in at least three ways that were informed by a cultural milieu that Paul also inhabited. They were (1) the framing of a concept of a universal natural law shared by biblical personages, (2) the framing of the existence and superiority of unwritten law, and (3) the incorporation and construction of the concept of living law as incarnated in the venerated patriarchs of Israel and Jesus. These divisions are made here only for discussion purposes, for they so easily and smoothly coalesce in Philo’s writings and probably also in the daily life of the diaspora community. Whereas many might view Paul against either his apocalyptic Jewish or Hellenistic context, I maintain in this chapter the relevance of both for our consideration of Paul’s concept of nomos in the messianic age. 1.1 Nomos and oecoumene¯ and the limits of pluralism Both Paul and Philo were powerful intellects; they shared a Hellenized Israelite religion; and they both inhabited a strongly Hellenized Jewish community. In Paul’s embrace of the ethnic other or Gentile he shared the universalism of Philo. Their outlooks on the end of the age differed. In the dawning of the new age when God’s Spirit was to be poured out on all flesh, Paul obviously believed that fresh thinking was required on a rubric for admission to the elect community. On this issue, Dunn is at least partially correct, that is, that Paul imagined a new covenant community to which non-Israelites gained access in other than the usual way, e.g., through the rite of circumcision, the observance of purity laws and/or other signifiers of adoption.30 The roots of this embrace of the whole inhabited world found articulation in both the Stoicism that Paul’s Israelite community embraced and in the prophets (especially Jeremiah and Isaiah) of his Greek scriptures. In this, Dahl was correct that Paul was heir to a Hellenistic monotheism with a universal reach, and with a vision that influenced and informed his Gentile mission in the messianic age.31 Philo also shared such a vision. Oecoumene¯ appears in the Pauline corpus only at Rom. 10.18, where Paul offered an apologetic for his Gentile gospel. He began with a question framed by Ps. 19.4: ‘Have they [i.e. the Gentiles] not heard?’ – then offered a citation from the LXX of the Psalms: Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the whole inhabited world (oikoumene¯s).

30. J. D. G. Dunn, ‘The New Perspective on Paul’, BJRL 65 (1983), pp. 95–122, esp. 102. 31. See N. Dahl, ‘The One God of Jews and Gentiles (Romans 3:29–30)’, in Studies in Paul: Theology for the Early Christian Mission (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1977), pp. 178–91.



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As Mussner rightly noted, Paul’s single use of oikoumene¯ hardly meant that his universal emphasis was inconsequential.32 And, as Lloyd Gaston argued, the pas or ‘all’ emphasis in Romans was inclusive language that revealed how deeply expansionist was Paul’s thinking expressed here and elsewhere.33 Both Mussner and Gaston were anticipated by Nils Dahl in his commentary on Rom. 3.29-30, where he noted that ‘in drawing the consequence that radical monotheism excludes any distinction, Paul shows some affinity with Greek philosophical monotheism, which was universalistic and more or less cosmopolitan’.34 Dahl rightly held that such an understanding by Paul came to him through the Hellenized Judaism of the diaspora that appropriated such a vision for apologetic purposes to ‘prove the excellency of the mosaic legislation and of the Jewish nation’.35 The tension between this universal reach and Paul’s pledged loyalty to Israel, or between boundlessness and boundedness, Victor Turner noted, fostered a liminal stage in which we rightly locate Paul.36 In this passage, Paul’s logic was pushed to breaking point as he argued that God’s oikoumene¯ will include the ethnic other while remaining true to the promises made to Israel. But at this point, Paul’s apocalypticism led him beyond Philo and the diaspora community of Alexandria, and in it Christ became the telos [fulfilment?] of the law (Rom. 10.4). Whereas Paul cited the word oikoumene¯ only once, Philo repeatedly emphasized his universalistic outlook through his oft-repeated use of oikoumene¯ (57 times). The Hellenistic filter through which Paul (and Philo) viewed the patriarchal narrative brought a Stoic and Cynic philosophical emphasis that devalued the polis. That Hellenistic ethos spurred Philo to go beyond the biblical text to claim citizenship not in a single polis but in the world ruled by a single law and a single polity (Creation 3; Abraham 61). He called Moses a ‘citizen of the world’ (kosmopolite¯s) and, therefore, not on the roll of any ‘city’ (polis) (Moses 1.157). Likewise, Adam and Abraham he viewed as citizens of the world (kosmopolite¯n; Creation 142). Furthermore, all of those consecrated to God, he held to be citizens of the world (kosmopolitide¯s) (Dreams 1.243). Finally, in the exordium to the life of Moses, Philo argued that the account of the creation of the world implies ‘that the world is in harmony with the law, and the law with the world, and that the man who observes the law is constituted thereby as a loyal citizen of the world’ (vit. Mos., 3–4). This coupling of Hellenistic culture with Israelite religion, however, was an uneasy one. Because of the weak and vulnerable position of the Israelite community in the majority culture, there were constant risks of excessive 32. See F. Mussner, ‘Heil für Alle’, Kairos 23 (1981), pp. 207–14. 33. See L. Gaston, ‘For All the Believers: The Inclusion of Gentiles as the Ultimate Goal of Torah in Romans’, in Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987), pp. 126–34. 34. Dahl, ‘The One God of Jews and Gentiles (Romans 3:29–30)’, p. 190. 35. Ibid. 36. V. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969).

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conformity, and consequently of a loss of identity, and occasionally there were threats of physical and mental abuse from the ‘ethnic other’. Philo cited the brutal measures taken against his community by Flaccus as a dangerous precedent that gave ‘people everywhere … [a] cue … [for the perpetuation of] outrage [against]… Jewish fellow-citizens by rioting against their synagogues and ancestral customs’ (Flaccus, 47, also 50 and 53). As Philo recited the outrages against his people, he said, ‘any Jews who showed themselves anywhere, they stoned or knocked about with clubs’ or even illegally crucified them (Flaccus, 66, also 62, 70 and 86). As in the exile, there was a need in these moments of affliction for a people to preserve its identity under threat. With nomos in an advantaged position, a contrast with anomia clearly assisted with this task of definition. The agraphos nomos was, in Philo’s view, the law of a particular people that stood opposite the lawless. He contrasted natural law (nomos phuseo¯s) with anomia, a synonym of ‘no law’ (De Plantatione¯, 25). This sharp contrast clearly aimed to demonstrate the superiority of the Israelite religion, and to secure the identity of a threatened minority. In Alexandria, for example, the rich and multi-faceted nature of anomia was made to stand opposite nomos to define its contours and to secure the loyalty of the insiders. The Septuagintal text(s) of the Psalms and Isaiah show how many Hebrew words huddled under anomia’s shelter. Such terms as awon (‘iniquity’), pasha’ (‘apostasy’), zad (‘arrogance’), halal (‘boastfulness’), rasha’ (‘wickedness’), hawah (‘crime’), pasha (‘rebellion’), hamas (‘violence’), ma’shakoth (‘fraudulent gain’), sarah (‘rebellion’), and mispach (‘bloodshed’), all taken together form a Rembrandtesque dark background against which the bright light of nomos and its observers was displayed to advantage.37 This contrast bestowed on nomos a pluri-significance as written or unwritten, as custom, as statutes of the polis, as principle, as Pentateuch, as story and as the Ten Commandments, and such a multi-faceted word was something of an all-purpose word that could fit or define any context. The diaspora context then made it difficult to use nomos as a signifier with one meaning that served all purposes. Moreover, modern interpreters would do well to realize that to decipher the meaning of nomos in the diaspora one simply must read the word in context. Further, it is simply misleading to try to transfer the word Torah with a given set of meanings to the diaspora and expect a one-to-one correspondence. For example, law in the Palestinian setting may indeed be a signifier of a covenantal nomism unmentioned in the Alexandrian diaspora. Attempts to claim ‘covenantal nomism’ as an implicit signifier of all Israelite religion, even that of the diaspora, are simply historically false. The expansion of condemnations prescribed by nomos evident in the use of its opposite, anomia, reflects a history of Jewish defence against assimilation and episodic harassment or persecution. The level of influence of the powerful, alluring Hellenistic culture was so great that attempts to repress 37. M. Flashar, ‘Exegetische Studien zum Septuaginta-Psalter’, in ZAW 32 (1912), pp. 169–70.



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that awareness, or to paper it over, failed, and even in the denials of influence, elements of Hellenistic piety were appropriated to make the case. The vulnerable status of the Israelite diaspora minority required innovative rhetorical moves to construct and secure identity, but those rhetorical moves destabilized an understanding of nomos. For example, the customs, laws, ordinances, traditions and rites of the Israelites defined the community by contrasting them with those of other peoples. But Philo could and often did illustrate his positive points with their opposite. A simple comparison may prove useful. The diaspora context resembled that of the Babylonian exile in some ways. That exiled community in Babylonia, facing possible extinction, developed a system of rules and laws that defined and maintained its identity. Through certain Sabbath, purity and food laws the community could assert a distinctiveness that endured even though the temple was in ruins and they were uprooted from the promised land. The comparison is inapt, however, because once the earlier Babylonian exilic community returned to Judaea and assumed religio-political control, it developed a hegemony that could ensure compliance; it assumed the power to assign status location; and it imposed its political will up to and through the Hasmonean period over an area rivalling the Davidic kingdom in size.38 But lacking the religio-political hegemony of the temple state of the Yehudim (or Ioudaioi of Paul and the Gospel of John), the diaspora community had to exert its pressure rhetorically in order to survive. The diaspora thus improvised ways to impose discipline by improvising laws, practices and innovative interpretations; it used law to emphasize difference and to attribute to the ‘other’ subhuman or even non-human traits, and that comparison enhanced its own sense of who it was. By using law as a fence to set a boundary to protect itself, the community did much to define itself to both the insider and the outsider. But this wall did more than fence the Israelite communities off from cultural rivals; it provided a protocol for interaction with the majority culture and for remaining open to the fruits, surprises and opportunities of the dominant culture. As a master interpreter, Philo presented the law as a gateway onto this wider world and as a vehicle for identity formation and maintenance. As Philo scolded Jewish sophisticates and chided rigorist literalists, he pledged to steer a middle course that was condemned by both sides. His writings were thus fraught with tension; they offered no systematic treatment of nomos interpretation, and they fixed no imposing fence between the Israelites and the ethnic other, but 38. As shown by S. Talmon, ‘The Emergence of Sectarianism in the Early Second Temple Period’, in P. D. Miller, P. D. Hanson and S. D. McBride (eds), Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1987), pp. 587–616. Also, please note D. Boyarin, ‘The Prehistory of Judaism’, in J. Capel Anderson, P. Sellew and C. Setzer (eds), Pauline Conversations in Context: Essays in Honor of Calvin J. Roetzel (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), pp. 216–39. Also, Roetzel ‘Ioudaioi and Paul’, in J. Fotopoulos (ed.), The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context: Studies in Honor of David E. Aune (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), pp. 3–15.

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they exhorted the Israelite community to observe the ancestral traditions and, more importantly, they offered guidance for negotiating boundaries, and for interacting with the Hellenistic majority in order to avoid alienation. Pressures to conform to the majority culture were unremitting for those desiring to get ahead (or even to survive), and though nomos guarded against excessive accommodation, it also warned against excessive isolation or compromise. Thus, through his mythic understanding and flexible application of law, Philo sought to guard against centrifugal cultural forces from within and centripetal forces from without. This view of the Hellenistic world was enriched by the biblical tradition Philo studied and interpreted and offered him a location from which he could criticize the law of the outsider and the rigidity of the insider. He rationalizes his preference for the unwritten, eternal, divine law, but scolds those so fixed on the written that they cannot appreciate the primal character of the unwritten: ‘Praise’, he said, ‘cannot be duly given to one who obeys the written laws (anagrapheisi nomois), since he [i.e. the rigorist] acts under the admonition of restraint from fear of punishment. But he who observes the unwritten (agraphois) deserves commendation since the virtue he displays is freely willed’ (Spec, 4.150). Philo certainly knew and observed the ceremonial law, but he carefully emphasized its ‘inner’ meaning and its higher symbolic value. At the same time, however, Philo scolded his educated peers, who were tempted to abandon the literal meaning of the laws altogether. And even though the written laws had a secondary importance in as much as they were derived from the ‘unwritten law’, they were, nevertheless, important. We see a similar delicate balance in Paul’s letters, e.g. Rom. 7.7: ‘Is the law sin; no, no absolutely not.’ Paul, like Philo, shared a diaspora setting that shaped him in important ways. His first language was Greek; his scriptures were Greek; his letter-form was Hellenistic; his methods of argumentation betrayed Stoic influence; his letters reveal an understanding of nomos bearing a family resemblance to that of the diaspora communities, and his understanding of nomos reveals some of the same flexibility. Although he nowhere used the exact phrase, Paul shared with Philo an understanding of the importance of ‘unwritten law’ (nomos agraphos). Others have noted Paul’s inclination toward ‘natural law’ in Rom. 1.19-20: ‘Ever since the creation of the world his [i.e. God’s] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made’ (my emphasis, RSV). Likewise, in 2.29 Paul’s concern with the unwritten divine imperative asserted itself: ‘For he is not a real Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something fleshly and physical. He is a Jew who is one inwardly [en to¯ krupto¯], and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, in the Spirit [en pneumatic ou grammati] not the letter’ (my emphasis, Rom. 2.29). Like Philo, Paul affirmed the surpassing importance of the inward law without denying the importance of the palpable expression of that unwritten imperative. Note, for example, in Rom. 8.1 how he affirmed for Gentiles the importance of a ‘law (nomos) of the spirit’ that was unwritten,



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eschatological and internal. While elsewhere Paul, like Philo, affirmed both the supreme importance of unwritten law, he could also, as did Philo, affirm the importance of the palpable written command, e.g. to love the neighbour (Lev. 19.18, 34; Rom. 13.8-10). We are only left to guess whether Paul looked to Jeremiah for instruction and inspiration on the linkage of unwritten law and the eschatological visitation, but his own recollection of his apostolic call (Gal. 1.15-16) suggests an awareness of Jeremiah 1.5 to which he distinctly alludes. The correspondences are too close to be accidental: ‘Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb (en koilia) I knew you, and before you came out of [your] mother [me¯tras] I consecrated you; I appointed you as a prophet to the ethne¯”’ [LXX, Gentiles or ethnic other, not nations as RSV].39 Note the resemblance to Paul’s autobiographical recollection of his call in Gal. 1.15-16: ‘But when he who had set me apart from my mother’s womb (en koilas me¯tros), and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the gentiles [en tois ethnesin]’ (my emphasis). Paul’s own celibacy created and sustained in the eschatological crisis resembles, if it does not imitate, that of Jeremiah during the Babylonian exile. Paul’s emphasis on the unwritten law, or law written on the heart, enjoys an authorization by, if not an inspiration from, Jer. 38.31-36 (LXX).40 Let us listen: Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not like the covenant which I made with their ancestors on the day when I took hold of their hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not abide in my covenant and I rejected them, says the Lord. For this is my covenant which I shall make with the house of Israel; after those days, says the Lord, I will surely put my laws into their mind, and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be God to them and they shall be my people. And they shall not each one teach his/her compatriot and everyone his brother [and sister], saying, ‘know the Lord’; for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest of them; for I will be merciful regarding their iniquities and I will no longer remember their sins. (Author’s translation)

Paul’s whole concept of a law written on the heart or even of a ‘law of the spirit’ (Rom. 8.1) and his subscription to the ‘new covenant’ (2 Cor. 3.6) echo this passage from Jeremiah. When combined with Paul’s apocalyptic vision and Gentile mission, this breathtaking emphasis on an interiorization of law is fully consistent and shares many nuances with the emphases of Philo and Qumran (e.g. an emphasis on the primacy of unwritten law without repudiating the written law [see Rom. 7.7]).

39. The emergence of nationalism came rather late in the Western experience, and therefore its use to refer to first-century peoples is anachronistic. Better is the use of a synonym of the Greek ethne¯, a synonym of ethnic and thus my frequent use of ‘ethnic other’. 40. It is taken for granted here that since Paul’s scriptures were the Greek Septuagint, I will, where possible, refer to that Greek text. Among NT scholars this is honoured more in theory than practice.

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Closely associated with Philo’s apology for the supreme value of ‘unwritten law’ that was secondary only to God was his insistence that the righteous were living incarnations of agraphos nomos. In his discourse on Abraham, Philo noted that Abraham ‘did the divine law (theion nomon) and the divine commands. He did them, not taught by written words, but unwritten nature …’ (Abraham, 275), and more specifically, Philo added that Abraham was ‘one who obeyed the law, some will say, but rather, as our discourse has shown, [was] himself a law and an unwritten statute’ (my emphasis, Abraham, 276). Against those who claimed that Abraham was simply one who obeyed the law, Philo disagreed and claimed that Abraham was ‘himself a law and an unwritten statute’ (Abraham, 276). Likewise Moses, Philo asserted, was ‘the reasonable and living impersonation of law’ (On Moses I.162). In his discussion of Moses as king, Philo added that ‘to command what should be done and forbid what should not be done is the peculiar function of law (nomon); so that it follows at once that the king is a living law, and the law is a just king’ (On Moses II.4). Likewise, since Philo viewed the narrative material in Genesis as introductory material to the decalogue, he claimed that those ‘whom Moses judged to be men of wisdom, who are set before us in the sacred books as founders of our people [not “nation” as Loeb has it] … [are] unwritten laws’ (Decal. 1). Finally, Philo expanded the whole concept of the incarnation of agraphos nomos by noting that all holy persons are ‘living laws’ (Abraham, 5-6). This whole concept of a living, incarnate law may find its echo in Paul’s reference to the nomon tou christou (Gal. 6.2) which is to be fulfilled by the Galatian converts or similarly, the observers of the ‘law of the spirit’ (Rom. 8.1), that is, the unseen, unwritten law of that special gift associated with and poured out on citizens of the last days. While the correspondence is hardly exact, the statement in Rom. 10.4 that Christ is the telos of the law has been variously read, but viewed in a diaspora setting shows certain affinities with Philonic thought. 3. Summary In this chapter I have tried to suggest that Paul’s understanding of nomos was enormously complex. It was shaped and informed by his passionate belief that Jesus was the Messiah whose death and resurrection followed by the outpouring of the Spirit signalled the beginning of the end-time; by his early and maturing years in a vibrant Hellenistic culture; by his early education in the Greek scriptures; and by at least an implicit suggestion that Messiah Jesus was the incarnation of the law of the end-times. Furthermore, in the apocalyptic moment Paul and his community experienced, there was clearly a revision of the understanding of nomos underway. Now, what is needed is a new look at Paul’s use of nomos throughout the letters. This brief summary has shown that Paul reshaped nomos to bring it into conformity with his



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messianism and to offer guidance and hope to varying epistolary contexts, and that a precedent for such action was underway already at Qumran. Paul’s revision, therefore, was a recipe for renewal. The study of this complex mix of a vibrant Hellenistic philosophical tradition, Jewish apocalypticism, Greek scriptures, and Paul’s messianism, and the ways this mix shaped and influenced Paul’s understanding of nomos, is a topic needing study. This brief chapter has done little more than to suggest that the emphases of a Hellenized Israelite religion on the unwritten, internalized nomos, on its universal scope, on a vibrant Israelite apocalypticism, on a messianism and on the incarnation of nomos all combined in Paul’s day, and in his fertile mind did much to destabilize accepted understandings, and to give nomos a highly nuanced and variable character. Such developments were hardly limited to ‘sectarian’ Jewish circles. Jassen has shown how at Qumran venerable texts and traditions were similarly rethought and reconfigured in the bright light of an apocalyptic dawn and eagerly expected divine visitation. The argument sometimes made that Paul’s usage of the term nomos always conformed exactly with that of the priestly Ioudaioi in Jerusalem is simply unsustainable. The apocalypticism harboured by both Paul and the Qumran priestly community tended to destabilize and reconfigure the whole concept of nomos. In light of the recent work by Bernard Levinson also, and even with disavowals to the contrary, an absolutely stable, unchanging configuration and interpretation of nomos could hardly be taken for granted.41 As in Alexandria, so also in Paul’s letters, a subscription to the unwritten law hardly required a renunciation of the written, but it did suggest a revaluation. While Paul can speak of Christ as the telos of the law (Rom. 10.4), he can in short order summarize the Levitical command to love the neighbour (Rom. 13.8-9). Paul did invoke the written nomos to secure the allegiance of those within the community, but entrance into the elect offered to the ‘ethnic other’ or outsider was for Paul on another basis entirely. Finally, a caveat is in order. This chapter has not tried to argue for a direct literary dependence of Paul on Philo, nor has it attempted to offer a comprehensive treatment of Paul on nomos, but it has shown that a possible cultural and religious congruence existed in the diaspora communities inhabited by these two men, one that complicates enormously the scholarly treatment of Paul and nomos in the messianic age. It has tried to lay out a hypothesis worth testing, and to affirm with this note the footnote of Davies; that is, that the time is ripe to return to this topic once more.

41. B. Levinson, Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Chapter 8

Identity

From Reflex to Reflection? in Philippians 2.6-11 and Its Context Robert L. Brawley

Identity and meaning in life go hand in glove. To have meaning is to have identity. To have identity is to have meaning. To have neither is to risk anomie, disaster, dread. Identity implies not merely an internal concept of oneself but also the behaviour manifested in the roles one plays. Moreover, social and individual identity are reciprocally dependent on each other:1 ‘Social identity theory is the theory of the dynamic and generative interdependence of selfconcept and intergroup relations’, which produces a consciousness of self in both individual and collective life.2 The more socially oriented the theory, the more it highlights influences of social structures on behavioural roles; but people also act against social norms. The more psychologically oriented the theory, the more it stresses personal values reflected in behaviour; but people also give priority to actions they consider unimportant and neglect what they consider of greater importance.3 In either case, identity involves a circular process – society shapes people who shape society shaping people. Many theorists maintain that a ‘dyadic personality’ in antiquity depended on social influences far more than does modern individual identity.4 A dyadic personality is not merely one’s construal of self but also the construal imposed

1. D. Abrams, ‘Social Identity, Social Cognition, and the Self: The Flexibility and Stability of Self-Categorization’, in Abrams and Hogg (eds), Social Identity, pp. 205–06. 2. D. Abrams and M. Hogg (eds), Social Identity and Social Cognition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), p. 6. J. Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München: Beck, 1999), p. 130. 3. S. Stryker and R. Serpe, ‘Identity Salience and Psychological Centrality’, Social Psychology Quarterly 57 (1994), pp. 16–35, esp. 17; S. Stryker and P. Burke, ‘The Past, Present, and Future of an Identity Theory’, Social Psychology Quarterly 63 (2000), pp. 284–97, esp. 284–88; J.-C. Kaufmann, L’invention de soi: Une théorie de l’identité (Paris: Colin, 2004), p. 44. 4. E.g. B. Malina and J. Neyrey, ‘First Century Personality: Dyadic, not Individual’, in J. Neyrey (ed.), The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), pp. 67–96.



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by social structures onto the self. In contrast to such dyadic identity, JeanClaude Kaufmann claims that personal identity is a product of modernity. Whereas before the Enlightenment, identity was one’s construal of self as a reflection of socialization, thereafter it became a construct from reflecting on oneself. To be sure, socialization still provided potential roles, but individuals attained freedom from social determinism, which enabled them to select from the menu.5 Moreover, in antiquity identity was static (‘Simon the Tanner’ was stuck with his identity) whereas now it is a dynamic process always in the making. Kaufmann visualizes this as a double helix. The nodes opposite each other on the edges of the helix are (1) external (objective) socialization and (2) subjective reflection. Subjective reflection allows conscious choices among possible images derived from the social heritage. But the helix is also always spiralling onward. That is, identity has become a dynamic process of revising one’s construal of self under the threat of losing meaning.6 Kaufmann dates the possibility of varying one’s identity by reflecting on it to the modern period. In attempting to administer their citizens, developing nation-states broke down smaller communities of socialization. This emancipated people to experiment among possible roles and to construe their identity subjectively, although they were still subject to confirmation from others.7 Thus modernity reverses the priority of the socially given (objective) over the individual construct (subjective) into subjective/objective.8 For Kaufmann, dreams of a new identity, that is, potential roles in society, which he calls ‘little cinemas’ (for which I use ‘videos’) belonged to antiquity just as to modernity. But before the modern era such dreams were discarded as hopeless. What has changed is that rather than discarding dreams as hopeless, modern human beings utilize a select few in order to prepare for a different future.9 1. Paul, Disruptions, and Reflection on New Images Ulrich Schmidt, who to my knowledge was the first to introduce Kaufmann’s theory into New Testament Studies, questions whether the Enlightenment inaugurated the only era in which disruptions in the way reality is construed led to reversals of the objective power of socialization to define subjective identity.10 Disruptions can be either negative or positive. On the one hand, brutal experiences may shock people so severely that they can no longer construe reality as before. When German President Johannes Rau was addressing the Norwegian Parliament on 11 September 2001 and heard 5. Kaufmann, L’invention, pp. 17–22. 6. Kaufmann, L’invention, pp. 7–8 (80). 7. Kaufmann, L’invention, pp. 17–42, 65–67, 72, 83, 89. 8. Kaufmann, L’invention, p. 91. 9. Kaufmann, L’invention, pp. 70, 77. 10. U. Schmidt, ‘Identität, Freiheit und Determination im Neuen Testament’ (unpublished paper, 2009).

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about the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, he said: ‘The world has changed.’ On the other hand, unexpected grace may surprise people so much that they are constrained to construe reality in a new way. A Euro-American acquaintance of mine was socialized in South Carolina in the 1940s as a racist. In the 1960s he was drafted into the army and did his basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. In a training exercise on a very hot summer day, he was injured and left alone on a sandy training field in the full sun without water. An African-American fellow soldier found him, gave him water from his canteen (drinking from the same canteen was crucial), and went to get a rescue team. Thereupon, my acquaintance ceased to be a racist. Did such disruptions from distress on the one hand and experiences of grace on the other require revisions in the way people construed reality and themselves in antiquity? In Philippians Paul does not leave his readers in the dark about disruptions that reshaped his socialized identity. On the positive side, his experience of knowing Christ astonishes him to such a degree that he revises his identity beyond his objective socialization as circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew from Hebrews, according to law a Pharisee, according to zeal one who persecuted the church, according to righteousness which is by means of law blameless (3.5-8). When I heard the honoree of this volume, William Campbell, spell out that Paul’s argument at this point is by no means a rejection of his socialization but a revision of it by way of comparison brought about by his new way of construing all reality in Christ,11 I had long ago climbed on board in my unpublished dissertation.12 Not only does Paul not repudiate the identity of any who have confidence in the flesh (3.4); he occupies common ground with them from which he then climbs to higher ground.13 Paul’s argument works only if he presumes the honourable status of his own identity as circumcised, an Israelite, a Benjaminite, a Pharisee. Even his zeal is a legitimating factor. To be sure, he repudiates persecuting the church as a result of his zeal, just as he repudiates the results of Israel’s zeal in Rom.10.2, but not commitment – his or theirs. According to Social Identity Theory, identity is multiple and contextual, that is, it varies according to context. Identity is multiple because people belong to a number of groups – e.g. ethnic, religious, social, geographical, political – and have a repertoire of roles – e.g. child, parent, spouse, vocation, 11. W. S. Campbell, ‘“I Rate All Things as Loss”: Paul’s Rhetoric of Comparison in Phil. 3.3-8 Read in Light of 1 Cor. 7.17-24 and Gal. 6.11-16’, (unpublished paper, 2008); see W. S Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006), pp. 88, 149–51, 157–58. 12. R. Brawley, ‘The Pharisees in Luke-Acts: Luke’s Address to Jews and His Irenic Purpose’ (PhD dissertation; Princeton Theological Seminary, 1978), pp. 119–20. In published form, R. Brawley, Luke-Acts and the Jews: Conflict, Apology, and Conciliation (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1987), pp. 96–97. 13. See K. Ehrensperger, Paul and the Dynamics of Power: Communication and Interaction in the Early Christ-Movement (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2007), p. 104.



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citizen, position.14 Identity varies because, as contexts change, different roles become salient over others.15 Some theorists attempt to fit different identities into a hierarchy relative to their importance. But this works only partially, because in given contexts what is most important may actually be suppressed. Salience in identity theory sheds light on Paul’s claims to his Israelite credentials in comparison with knowing Christ. In this context, his identity in Christ is salient over his other identities. But in a different context in Rom. 11.1, his Israelite identity is salient. Thus, salience further confirms Campbell’s point that Paul does not dismiss his Israelite identity. Even though Paul’s identity in Christ has priority in Phil. 3.5-9, other than his behaviour of persecuting the church, its salience does not abrogate other aspects of his identity which he names. Rather, it demonstrates what is salient in this context. It is clear that Paul’s knowing Christ (3.8) is not merely cognitive. It is an interrelationship that changes images of his role and therefore changes his behaviour. But there are indications that beyond the positive creative power of Paul’s experience of knowing Christ as his Lord, social and political realities, such as Kaufmann identifies with the collapse of socially controlled determination of identity with the Enlightenment, also brought about disruptions in what Paul received as the social legacy for his identity. Disruptions from imperial systems likely contributed to Paul’s revision of the objective givens of his social identity before he wrote Philippians, but this becomes obvious in his imprisonment (1.7). Conventionally, Paul’s assurance of deliverance from imprisonment (1.19) has been evaluated as his confidence in the Roman system of justice. But he knows that it is possible that his imprisonment will result in death (1.20). Further, his assurance that he will be delivered is based not on Roman justice but on the prayer of the Philippians and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, that is, on a construal of reality that is precisely an alternative to Roman justice. Further, one thing in the context clinches the conclusion that Paul cannot base his confidence on Roman justice – Jesus’ death on a cross (2.8) – an appalling miscarriage of Roman justice, to which I will return. In this context, one video that Paul plays for himself is martyr, in both its original and derivative sense. He reflects on his role as a witness for the gospel (1.7; 1.20). But this is also tied up with a role as a sacrificial offering such that 14. Stryker and Serpe, ‘Identity Salience’, p. 17; Stryker and Burke, ‘The Past’, p. 284. 15. J.-C. Deschamps and W. Doise, ‘Crossed Category Memberships in Intergroup Relations’, in H. Tajfel (ed.), Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (London: Routledge, 1978), p. 144; van A. Knippenberg, ‘Status Differences, Comparative Relevance, and Intergroup Differentiation’, in Tajfel (ed.), Differentiation, p. 178; J. Turner and R. Brown, ‘Social Status, Cognitive Alternatives, and Intergroup Relations’, in Taifel (ed.), Differentiation, p. 222; N. Ellemers, R. Spears and B. Doosje (eds), Social Identity: Context, Commitment, Content (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), p. 24; J. Turner, The Structure of Sociological Theory (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 3rd edn, 1982), p. 372.

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he can exalt Christ not only in life but also in death. This role surfaces again when Paul plays the video of a libation in 2.17 and makes an analogy with the death of Christ in 3.10-11. But the analogy with Christ’s death requires yet another step in Paul’s reflection on himself. His role as a sacrifice cannot be divorced from God’s power that raised Jesus from the dead. For his destiny to be analogous with Christ’s death, he must also cast himself in dependence upon the power that raised Jesus. Paul also plays a video of kinship for himself. Six times he employs a0delfo/v, almost presumptively, to portray the Philippians as his siblings (1.12; 3.1, 13, 17; 4.1, 8). He uses the same term twice to refer to his relationship with other Christ-followers in the place from which he writes (1.14; 4.21) and once more for his relationship with Epaphroditus (2.25). In a more rare construal of fictive kinship for Paul, he describes his relationship with Timothy as analogous to a father and a child (2.22).16 Joseph Marchal construes Paul’s kinship language in Philippians as a part of ‘friendship’ imagery and argues that ancient friendships were elitist, aristocratic, agonistic, competitive, and based on inequalities in hierarchical relationships that exploited women and lower classes.17 This is a curious turn for several reasons. (1) Paul makes no reference to friendship, and the only occurrences of any Greek root associated with friendship are in the word prosfilh= in 4.8 (‘lovely’, ‘amiable’) and in the compound name of the city Fili/ppoi [‘fond of horses’] and its inhabitants. (2) Thus, rather than originating from Paul, the theme of friendship in Philippians comes from Paul’s interpreters. The question, then, is not what friendship means for Paul but what it means for Paul’s interpreters who use it to characterize the epistle. (3) Marchal’s discussion of friendship in antiquity depends on elitist literature, which expresses ideals of a small percentage of the population. In addition, it is an analysis of the concept ‘friendship’ rather than a description of dynamic relationships expressed in Philippians. On the one hand, Marchal is certainly correct that Paul attempts to persuade his addressees to play a role in solidarity with him. On the other hand, it should not be overlooked that Paul also reflects on himself as a recipient of the ministry of others. So his brother Epaphroditus has been the agent of the ministry of the Philippians to Paul (2.25), and this also obligates him to play a role in solidarity with them. In contrast to the absence of friendship language, fictive kinship is prominent. In antiquity, kinship too could be interpreted in rigid hierarchical 16. On the role of parents as educators see Ehrensperger, Paul and the Dynamics of Power, pp. 117–36. 17. J. A. Marchal, Hierarchy, Unity, and Imitation: A Feminist Rhetorical Analyisis of Power Dynamics in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 2006), pp. 24–46.



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terms where status was determined by birth and ethnicity. But Paul’s fictive kinship is a revision of hierarchical realities determined by birth. With respect to this language, David Horrell makes the simple but crucial observation that real families often differed from elitist patriarchal portraits of their ideal.18 Further, he concludes that Paul’s use of sibling language projects roles of equality, mutual responsibility, and solidarity without denying asymmetrical relationships implied by parent–child imagery, as in the case of Paul and Timothy.19 Paul, however, also makes room for siblings who are not in solidarity with him. His imprisonment has created a scandal among some of the a)delfoi/ (1.14-15). Paul takes a step well described by Social Identity Theory to reinterpret negative evaluations of behaviour that does not meet group norms.20 He sets up an antithesis between his critics’ assumptions of the cause of his imprisonment, whatever their assumptions may have been, and his own claim that it is for Christ. To be sure, Paul accuses those who evaluate his imprisonment negatively of being contentious or acting out of selfish ambition, but in contrast to Marchal’s notion that Paul attempts to eliminate opposition to his perspectives,21 he allows a place for their proclamation of Christ (1.14-18). Furthermore, Paul envisions a role for himself as someone who lives out a concrete form of citizenship in solidarity with others. Although Elizabeth Castelli notes the ‘peculiar form’ summimhtai/ in 3.17, she takes it without further ado to be part of an exhortation to imitate Paul, which, for her, means a hierarchy of power from Christ to Paul to Christians.22 But the ‘peculiar form’ begs for more attention. The first syllable of summimhtai/ means ‘joint’. The rest of the word, from the same stem as the verb mime/omai, can indeed mean ‘imitator’, but this is a secondary meaning derived from its fundamental meaning of ‘representation’: ‘The essence of the idea is not so much … sameness … but rather … bringing to expression, representation, portrayal.’23 Which meaning fits here? The initial syllable actually implies a ‘joint’ enterprise with Paul. Thus, summimhtai/ mou should be understood not as an objective genitive, ‘join as imitators of me’, but as a subjective genitive, ‘join with me in representing’.24 This meaning is confirmed by the rest of the sentence which calls for consideration of ‘those who walk on a way of life’ 18. D. Horrell, ‘From a0delfoi/ to oi)k/ ov qeou=: Social Transformation in Pauline Christiantity’, JBL 120 (2001), pp. 293–311, esp. 298. 19. Horrell, ‘From a0delfoi/’, pp. 299, 303. 20. H. Tajfel, ‘The Achievement of Group Differentiation’, in Tajfel (ed.), Differentiation, pp. 86–97; H. Giles, ‘Linguistic Differentiation in Ethnic Groups’, in Tajfel (ed.), Differentiation, pp. 385–86. 21. Marchal, Hierarchy, pp. 163–64. 22. E. Castelli, Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (Louisville, KY: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1991) pp. 95–96. 23. W. de Boer, Imitation of Paul: An Exegetical Study (Kampen: Kok, 1962), p. 2. 24. Appealing to a background in Israel’s traditions, Ehrensperger associates ‘imitation’ not with ‘sameness’ but with walking in the way of those traditions (Paul, pp. 139–42).

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(peripatou= ntev, 3.17): ‘Join with me in expressing a way of life.’ As Castelli indicates, a model for imitation ‘imbues the model with a privileged and unattainable status’.25 Thus, for Paul to set himself up as such a model would be a ploy for a privileged and unattainable status. Kathy Ehrensperger defines such privilege and status not as power but violence.26 On the other hand, empowerment of a group for transformation, which may mean embodying differences and asymmetrical relationships among members of the group for ‘reciprocal collective action’, actualizes power without violence.27 This is similar to Jae Won Lee’s reading of Paul’s politics of difference as ‘equality with difference’.28 These perspectives on solidarity with difference for group action throw light on how Paul’s exhortation is for the Philippians to join him and others (3.17) as concrete representations of a way of life. This way of life is a particular type of citizenship (1.27; 3.20) as an alternative to imperialism, which I develop in more detail below.29 Second, the way of life is not so much exemplary as it is ‘imprinted’, which is the basic meaning of tu/pov (3.17).30 Not to be overlooked is that Timothy joins Paul in writing and promulgating Philippians (1.1; 2.19), indicating that Paul envisions his role not as a Lone Ranger but as one among others in a shared movement.31 Further, Paul, Timothy, Epaphroditus and the Philippians themselves (4.10, 15-18) are concrete cases of the imprinted way of life. Third, walking on this imprinted way of life is to be on the way toward an objective, namely, the resurrection – a future prospect (for Kaufmann, living toward the future is a significant part of identity from reflecting on oneself32). Nevertheless, the way of life is imprinted with a present experience of the power of God that raised Jesus: ‘The one who is working among you is God’ (2.13). Notably, Paul is not writing from the perspective of the dominant culture, but from the perspective of the marginalized, like Jesus himself, as we shall see. No one is a hero so much as a concrete case of how God is at work in a most unexpected way-in those on the margins of the dominant culture. Further, because of his own incomplete state (3.12-14), Paul is not an example of ‘unattainable status’ so much as a fellow traveller on the way of life that is imprinted by God’s power. 25. Castelli, Imitating, p. 89. 26. Ehrensperger, Paul, pp. 22–26 (following Hannah Arendt). 27. Ehrensperger, Paul, pp. 22–24. 28. J.-W. Lee, ‘Justification of Difference in Galatians’, in R. Brawley (ed.), Character Ethics and the New Testament: Moral Dimensions of Scripture (Louisville, KY: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 2007), pp. 191–208, esp. 205, n. 4. 29. M. Hooker, ‘Philippians 2.6-11’, From Adam to Christ: Essays on Paul (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 92–93, speaks of ‘conformity to’ rather than ‘imitation of’ Christ, which more adequately fits Paul’s use of summimhtai/. An emphasis on the concrete way of life is found in S. Fowl, The Story of Christ in the Ethics of Paul (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), pp. 92–95, with his notion of an ‘exemplar’ in Thomas Kuhn’s terms, but Fowl places far too little emphasis on the lordship of Christ. 30. W. de Boer, Imitation, p. 17. 31. Ehrensperger, Paul, pp. 35–37, 50. 32. Kaufmann, L’invention, pp. 77, 258.



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In the fourth place, this imprinted way of life means living out a certain kind of citizenship (poli/teuma), which Paul associates with heaven. In contrast to an exclusively future understanding of expecting a saviour from heaven, in 3.19-20 Paul makes a contrasting correlation between an earthly way of life and heavenly citizenship in the present. Though heavenly citizenship involves a future expectation, the imagery is first of all spatial and qualitative rather than temporal. In other words, at this juncture heavenly citizenship is not future – note Paul’s use of the present tense u(pa/ rxei – but a present way of living that is an alternative to an earthly way, to which I will return. Nevertheless, when the future conformity to Christ’s body of glory is realized (3.21), the asymmetry will cease to exist, and, as Ehrensperger effectively points out, asymmetry is not domineering when the goal of its transformative power is to render itself obsolete.33 2. The Philippians, Disruptions, and Reflection on New Images Philippians gives clues that the recipients of Paul’s letter were experiencing a harrowing disruption. They were facing some kind of distress that Paul paralleled with his imprisonment and associated implicitly with Christ’s crucifixion (1.29; see 2.8). The source of the suffering is ‘those who are in opposition’ (1.28). Against conventional interpretations of outside opponents, Marchal takes these to be competitors among Christ-followers whose perspective differs from Paul’s, so that Paul’s rhetoric is a play to gain authority against them.34 Granted, Paul’s call for the Philippians to be oriented toward the same thing could imply uncertainty among them and an attempt by Paul to win them to his side. On the other hand, even if Paul’s situation in prison involves some ‘siblings’ who interpret it as a scandal, Paul handles that summarily by revaluing the shame of his imprisonment, whereas the imprisonment itself is a matter of life and death (1.20). The parallel to Paul’s imprisonment and the designation of the problem as suffering ‘on behalf of Christ’ suggest far more strongly that those who are in opposition are outsiders. Not only is suffering a disruptive shock that occasions reflection on social roles; it is itself an element of identity. From a philosophical perspective, Paul Ricoeur shows compellingly that suffering becomes a part of identity, especially when suffering that shatters constructs of identity becomes part of a narrative in which those who suffer are characters.35 In Phil. 1.27-30 Paul plays just such a video in which the Philippians are characters whose story of suffering is recounted, albeit elliptically. More instructive than anything, however, is the video of citizenship that Paul plays for the Philippians. He depicts their role as living as ‘free citizens’ 33. Ehrensperger, Paul, pp. 33, 61. 34. Marchal, Hierarchy, pp. 163–64 and passim. 35. P. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993), pp. 143–45.

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in a way that is worthy of the good news of Christ (1.27). Conventional interpretations tend to dismiss a political connotation of politeu/ esqe in favour of some kind of ‘religious’ meaning. But lexically a political connotation is all there is.36 Philippi was a colony settled by Roman military veterans who were granted land and Roman citizenship. The land grants came at the expense of local populations who lost property to the veterans. It is not likely that many of the Greek-speaking recipients of Paul’s letter were Roman citizens, so they would have been marginalized both in property and status. Nevertheless, Paul plays the video of citizenship for them. The actual disruptive suffering of the congregation defies recovery, but it is clear that Paul’s remedy of conduct involving political realities implies a disruption of social relationships on the order of what Kaufmann names as precipitating an identity crisis. On the one hand, like the developing nation-states after the Enlightenment, in attempting to administer its citizens Rome also broke down communities of socialization, which set people free from traditional control of their identity. Further, Rome’s imposition of veterans and displaced people from Italy with a different language and culture disrupted life in Philippi. On the other hand, the gospel of Christ presumably surprised the Philippians with unexpected grace positively enough for them to ponder their social roles anew. Though it comes two chapters later, citizenship in heaven in 3.20 elaborates 1.27. The connection between the two passages is hard to miss, given that poli/teuma in 3.20 occurs only here in the New Testament and politeu/omai in 1.27 appears nowhere else in Paul and only in one other place in the New Testament. The appearance of these rare terms in proximity to each other strongly indicates that 1.27 and 3.20 mutually interpret each other. When they are read in light of each other, Paul is playing a video of an alternative kind of Philippian citizenship. The terms themselves leave no doubt that civic behaviour is in mind. But the civic behaviour is not according to the default presumption of the good news of Caesar. Rather, it is according to the good news of Christ (1.27). In 3.19-21, this good news involves the rule of Christ over ta\ pa/nta (‘all things’). Christ’s rule over ta\ pa/ nta stands in contrast to an orientation to ta\ e0pi/geia (‘earthly things’, 3.19), which indicates that ta\ e0pi/geia is an earthly rule. Nothing implies that citizenship according to the good news of Christ means open revolt against imperial rule; rather, it is a way of life imprinted by the power of God that is an alternative to imperialism.37 36. See R. Brewer, ‘The Meaning of Politeuesthe in Philippians 1.27’, JBL 73 (1954) pp. 76–83, esp. 77–82; H. Strathmann, TDNT 6.527, 534 claims incorrectly that in Josephus Ant. 12.142 politeu/omai loses its political sense in favour of religious conduct and that Phil. 1.27 has no reference to life in society. Josephus is speaking expressly about the government of Jerusalem. I can only presume that Strathmann makes the assumption that religion and politics are separate spheres, which was hardly the case in antiquity. 37. Campbell, Paul, pp. 68–72, speaks of the pervading context of the empire. See Ehrensperger, Paul, pp. 12, 79, with respect to parts of Paul’s letters in general that advocate a way of life as an alternative to, rather than inversion of, the dominant society.



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3. The Christological Hymn38 and the Imprinted Way of Life39 As a response to opposition on the one hand and to the good news of Christ on the other, Paul puts the video of a common orientation on the screen. Orientation is itself a matter of identity in as much as it implies a role of moving toward the future. In this case, however, the role has a corporate character. The members of the community together are to have one orientation – to\ e $n fronou=ntev (2.2). Castelli and Marchal take this as a ploy for power that erases difference and superimposes Pauline sameness.40 But the video of how the other is ‘othered’, namely each looking out for the things of others (2.4), means that such an understanding is hardly viable. In the context of suffering in 1.27-30, Emmanuel Levinas’ priority of the suffering of the other finds uncanny resonance here. The suffering of others ignites obligation because one beholds the Other in the face of one who suffers: ‘The face of the other [is] the original locus of the meaningful.’41 In a context of suffering, this orientation, which inverts the priority of oneself and the other, keeps this social role from being a ploy for anyone’s authority. The video of having a common orientation is developed further in 2.6-11. There are two basic interpretations of the hymn. One takes it as presenting Christ as an example to imitate, which for most such interpreters is part of a larger picture presenting Timothy, Epaphroditus, and Paul also as examples to emulate. The other way reads it as an account of how God highly exalted Christ to be Lord of all. I have already shown how the epistle develops the notion of walking on a way of life imprinted by God’s power under Christ’s lordship. Correspondingly, what follows is a reading of 2.6-11 as a description of how God highly exalted Christ and made him Lord of all. First, however, I deal briefly with Marchal’s dismissive generalization that those who do not interpret 2.6-11 as an example to emulate do so on theological rather than rhetorical grounds.42 I distance myself from this generalization, though my interpretation is assuredly theological simply because the hymn is theocentric and christological. But in order to understand the text I rely on lexicography, syntax, grammar, and reader response. Because it plays a primary rhetorical role in shaping reader response, the introduction to the hymn in 2.5 is of first order. For starters, the NRSV translation, ‘Let this same mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus’, poorly represents the Greek. One difficulty is that it is virtually impossible to render the verb fronei=te into English without paraphrasing it with a noun. Thus the 38. I am aware of discussions about the genre of 2.6-11, but for convenience I use ‘hymn’. 39. R. Brawley, ‘“Have this Mindset Among Yourselves”: A Way of Reconciliation in Philippians’, Theological Studies (Korea) 49 (2006), pp. 111–38, covers much of the same ground as this section. 40. Marchal, Hierarchy, p. 32; Castelli, Imitating, pp. 95–97. 41. E. Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 23. 42. Marchal, Hierarchy, p. 133, n. 65; p. 185, n. 8.

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English winds up with a noun, ‘mind’, which can be located in the people who are referred to by the prepositional phrase e0n u(mi=n, whereas as an action the verb supplies nothing to be located anywhere. Further, frone/w reflects not merely a way of thinking as implied by ‘this same mind’ but also an ‘orientation’ or ‘mindset’ (note my own recourse to nouns to paraphrase the verb). Second, the phrase e0n u(mi=n is poorly represented by ‘in you’, which does not distinguish between the second person singular and plural. The Greek is plural, corresponding to every reference to the addressees in 1.18–2.5. In other words, the Greek indicates a corporate group, as in my southern US idiom ‘you all’. In short, e0n u(mi=n corresponds to something like ‘among yourselves’. Third, the Greek relative clause o4 kai\ e0n Xristw= | 0Ihsou= has no verb – a common construction, although English often requires a circumlocution such as ‘was’, as in the NRSV. In combination with supplying the verb there is also ambiguity in how to construe two prepositional phrases: e0n u9mi=n o4 kai\ e0n Xristw= | 0Ihsou=. It is possible for ‘in you’ (plural), to be construed with the verb fronei=te and ‘in Christ Jesus’ with the verb ‘was’, which is supplied for this translation. Such a construal supports the NRSV: ‘Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus’ (note: there is no equivalent of ‘same’ in 2.5). But the fact that all references to the addressees in the context are in the plural plays a significant role in an alternative construal. Briefly put, there is no individual locus for the mindset among the Philippians to correspond to a presumed locus of the mindset in Christ Jesus. Further, because Paul is giving a communal exhortation, in 2.2 the community is to have one mindset, which also strongly indicates that e0n u9mi=n is to be understood as ‘among you’: ‘Have this mindset among yourselves.’ Understanding the Greek also involves determining where to locate the relative pronoun o3 (‘that’). The NRSV locates it in ‘Christ Jesus’ (‘that was in Christ Jesus’). But the mindset represented by ‘that’ is identical to the mindset represented by ‘this’ in the first half. Thus, just as the mindset in the first half is located among the addressees, it is also possible to locate the mindset of the second half among them. In addition, the phrases e0n u9mi=n and e0n Xristw= | 0Ihsou= are parallel, so that instead of ‘in Christ’ modifying ‘was’ (which has to be supplied), as in the NRSV, both prepositional phrases can modify the verb fronei=te. Thus, a plausible English rendering would be: ‘Have this mindset among yourselves which [you have] in Christ Jesus.’ Further, the first word of the introduction in 2.5 is a demonstrative pronoun tou=to (‘this’). It is possible for tou=to to anticipate something to follow such as a mindset to be demonstrated in 2.6-11. But it is far more common for tou=to to sum up what has gone before, which would be the mindset of 2.2. In fact, elsewhere in Paul tou=to always refers to what precedes rather than anticipating something that is to follow.43 43. E. Lohmeyer, Kyrios Jesus: Eine Untersuchung zu Phil.2:5-11 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 2nd edn 1961), p. 13. The NRSV actually presumes this function when it adds ‘same’ to 2.5, because this comes from 2.2.



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An additional feature of the syntax makes ‘in Christ’ emphatic. The phrase occurs at the beginning of the exhortation in 2.1 and at the end of 2.5. ‘In Christ’, therefore, forms an inclusio. All along Paul has been addressing the Philippians as those who are in Christ. So also now the hymn is addressed to those who are in Christ. In sum, 2.5 is not so much Paul’s introduction to 2.6-11 as it is the culmination of his exhortation in 2.1-4 for the Philippians to have the mindset befitting those who are in Christ. Lexicography, grammar and syntax support a construal which I paraphrase: ‘Have this mindset among yourselves which is the mindset you have as those who are in Christ Jesus.’44 That is, the addressees rather than the mindset are located in Christ Jesus, just as in 2.1 the encouragement is for those who have the identity of those who are ‘in Christ’. Further, to be ‘in Christ’ means to live in a relationship that reflects the early Christian belief that the risen one actively takes initiative toward human beings and is not simply a passive resident of heaven. Thus the hymn does not establish Christ as a passive example to imitate. It is a vivid account of two things. (1) It characterizes the Christ who enters into a relationship with the community so that it is ‘in Christ’, and (2) it relates how Christ lived in relation to God and how God exalted him and made him Lord of all. Conventional interpretations take 2.6-8 as referring to Christ’s preexistence and incarnation. I do not deny that elsewhere Paul may refer to Christ’s pre-existence and incarnation. But can this be sustained for this passage? The first test is the lexical, syntactical and grammatical features of 2.6-8. The main verb in 2.6 is the aorist h9gh/sato (‘[did not] consider’) which has an object a9rpagmo/n (‘booty’) and an articular infinitive to\ ei} nai i1sa qew= | functioning as a double accusative. The aorist verb may have reference to either a pre-existing or historical state, but a decision rests on how to construe the remainder of the passage. To be sure, a participial clause means something like ‘existing in the form of God’. On its own, however, this could be a reference to either the creation of human beings in the image of God as in Gen. 1.26-27 or a divine-like pre-existence. But how are readers to understand the repetition in 2.7 of the word ‘form’ modified by the genitive of the word ‘slave’, along with ‘human likeness’ and a synonym for ‘form’ defined by ‘as a man’? The dominant way to interpret these is in contrast to the form of God in 2.6. But it is also possible to take them as inverse parallels to the story of humanity in Genesis 1–3.45 The reason I use ‘divine-like’ four sentences earlier has to do with the meaning of the articular infinitive. Though the meaning is far from transparent, it assuredly does not mean ‘being equal with God’. In the infinitive phrase i1sa is a neuter plural adjective and as such cannot modify God, which would require a masculine dative singular (see, for example, John 5.18). Neuter

44. This resembles the Authorized Luther version, which also is able to render fronei=te with verb forms: ‘Seid gesinnt wie es der Gemeinschaft in Jesus Christus entspricht.’ 45. See esp. J. Héring, ‘Kyrios Anthropos’, RHPR 16 (1936), p. 200.

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adjectives are often used adverbially, and this is the case here.46 Three passages in the LXX use i1sa adverbially. In Isa. 51.23 the people of Jerusalem have made their backs ‘like the ground’ (i1sa th=| gh=)| for their oppressors to walk all over them. Job 27.16 reads, ‘Even if one gathers silver like (w#sper) dirt and provides gold like (i1sa) mud’. The parallelism between i1sa and w#sper assures that the former means ‘like’ at the same time that the metaphorical relationship between dirt and silver as well as between mud and gold clearly precludes equality. The term appears also in Wis. 7.3 where the author claims that at his birth he cried ‘like (i1sa) everyone else’. Instructive as they are, these parallels do not use i1sa with the verb ei0mi/ as in Phil. 2.6. There are, however, some instances in Greek literature. Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War 3.14 has a close parallel i1sa kai\ i9ke/tai e0sme/n, in which i1sa is equivalent to the adverb o9moi/w v (‘similar’). In the context, an appeal is made to reverence Zeus ‘in whose temple we are even like suppliants’ (Charles Smith omits the notion of likeness in his LCL translation). In Homer’s Odyssey 15.520 a certain Eurymachus is characterized as a good man, and it is said that the people of Ithaca look on him i1sa qew= | , that is, as if he were a god (ei0mi/ is absent but implicit). In the Illiad 5.71 Theano raises Pedaeus, the illegitimate son of Antenor, as if he were her own child (i1sa fi/loisi te/kessi). This brief philological foray shows that i1sa connotes similarity but not equality. The phrase in Phil. 2.6 might be expressed: ‘He did not consider being like God booty to be grabbed.’ Erik Heen expands the parallels in Greek literature by considering the compound adjective i0so/qeov, which appears more frequently and usually with either a verb or noun form of ‘honour’. From Hellenistic times, godlike honours were bestowed on elite benefactors but by the time of Augustus were restricted to the emperor and his family. Although Christ did not grasp at being like God, his ultimate exaltation with the name above every name implies that now he is i1sa qew= | . For 2.6 to associate i1sa qew= | with one whom the empire treated like a slave is a subversive slap in the face of the emperor who was supposed to be the only one to be so designated.47 In fact, the form of a slave, which Christ assumed (2.7), is far more closely related to his obedience in 2.8 than to an assumed incarnation for which there is no reference in the context. Conventionally, e0tapei/nwsen is interpreted romantically as an unassuming attitude toward oneself. But its basic meaning is to have a low social status, (also reflected in the compound noun on the same stem in 2.3), which in this case is the form of a slave. Further, this low social status is intimately related to the form of Jesus’ obedience – obedience 46. So BDF §434; BDAG, p. 481. J. Murphy-O’Connor, ‘Christological Anthropology in Philippians 2.6-11’, RB 83 (1976), p. 39. It eludes me why Vollenweider claims that there is no semantic distinction between i1sov qew=| and i1sa qew=.| The first is an adjective that would be construed with ‘who’, that is, with Christ. The second is an adverb that must be construed with to\ ei]nai. See S. Vollenweider, ‘Der “Raub” der Gottgleichheit: Ein religionsgeschichtlicher Vorschlag zu Phil. 2.6 (-11)’, NTS 45 (1999), pp. 413–33, esp. 418, n. 37). 47. E. Heen, ‘Phil 2.6-11 and Resistance to Local Timocratic Rule: Isa Theo and the Cult of the Emperor in the East’, in R. Horsley (ed.), Paul and the Roman Imperial Order (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2004), pp. 125–53.



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to the point of death by crucifixion. In other words, Jesus’ humility in the form of a slave did not mean acquiescence to institutional powers (implicit in references to the ‘institution’ of slavery). It means rather that he died like a slave. 48 That is, Jesus’ obedience to God was a way of life in tension with the imperial system as he experienced it, and as a consequence he died like a slave. Thus 2.8 focuses not on Jesus’ death as such but on the kind of death: he died on a cross like a slave.49 Crucifixion, with rare exceptions, was reserved for rebellious foreigners and unruly slaves whose way of life differed from that of the dominant culture.50 Thus Cicero refers to crucifixion as ‘the most miserable and most painful punishment appropriate to slaves alone’ (Against Verres 5.169). Not only was crucifixion imposed on those marginalized from the social order; if the victims were not already socially marginalized, crucifixion itself was an attempt to declare them deviant and therefore to eliminate them from the social order permanently.51 The way Jesus and his contemporaries experienced the empire was indirectly from the top of a pyramid down, from emperor through provincial governors, client kings, and local collaborators.52 The hymn offers the briefest of allusions to Jesus’ way of life that brought him into conflict with this system, but it cannot be lost that Paul exhorts his readers to a citizenship that is an alternative to the imperial system – their citizenship, in contrast to the present earthly way of life, is in heaven at the present time (3.20). Paul’s thanksgiving in 4.10-18 to the Philippians for their gift to him turns out to be a concrete case of such citizenship in which they put Paul’s interest above their own in contrast to the earthly imperialistic way. Thereby they participate in what Richard Horsley calls ‘an “international” political-economic dimension diametrically opposed to the tributary political economy of the Empire’.53 In the end, the hymn is about God’s astounding act to reverse the attempt of the imperial system to marginalize Jesus and ban him forever from the social order. To the surprise of virtually everyone familiar with Paul, 2.9 skips over Jesus’ resurrection, though perhaps it is subsumed in the exaltation. To be sure, in the context Paul spells out the resurrection as God’s reversal of 48. After writing this I discovered that Hengel makes the same kind of connection between Jesus’ identity as a slave in Phil. 2.7 and his crucifixion in 2.8, see M. Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1977), p. 62. 49. On the particularity of Jesus’ death (rather than, for example, a symbol) see Hengel, Crucifixion, pp. 18–20. 50. See Hengel, Crucifixion, pp. 13–14, 34–38, 46–63. 51. See R. Brawley, Text to Text Pours Forth Speech: Voices of Scripture in Luke-Acts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 93; C. Brown, ‘Ernst Lohmeyer’s Kurios Christos’, in R. Martin and B. Dodd (eds), Where Christology Began: Essays on Philppians 2 (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1998), p. 26; J. Marcus, ‘Crucifixion as Parodic Exaltation’ JBL 125 (2006), pp. 73–87. 52. See this pattern in Luke 3.1-2. 53. R. Horsley (ed.), Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994), p. 251.

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Jesus’ crucifixion, but in 2.6-11 emphasis falls on God’s act to make Christ Jesus Lord of all. Like the citizenship in heaven in 3.20, this also is a present reality in which the risen Christ is an active agent ‘according to the power that enables him to subject all things to himself’. Otfried Hofius shows that the bending of every knee ‘in heaven, on earth, and under the earth’ is not merely Jesus’ victory over demonic powers but the accession of Jesus to the position of Lord over human powers who are at enmity with God and who threaten other humans.54 At the same time, powers that are at enmity with God and threaten other humans are not merely political but also social and religious. William Campbell has played an important role against negative portrayals of Jesus’ own people, with which I heartily agree. It is nevertheless highly likely that local elite collaborators in Judaea, especially the high priestly party, played a role in Jesus’ experience of the imperial system. Such a statement calls for some immediate qualifications: (1) In the imperial system local collaborators were entirely necessary if the people were to maintain any kind of national identity and (limited) autonomy. (2) Collaborators not only cooperated with but also resisted the empire in the interests of their traditional identity. (3) Nevertheless, collaborators also acted in their own interests to maintain their elite status. This means that the way Jesus experienced the imperial system involved what we think of today as political, social and religious dimensions. But to qualify this again, actions of collaborators do not reflect on the people as a whole, positively or negatively. Jesus’ experience of imperial systems resulting in his crucifixion, however, is a detour on the way to the Philippians’ experience of the empire. Along with political and social dimensions, religious dynamics are present. Succinctly put, imperial religion was the adjunct of imperial power.55 Indeed, imperial religion used local religions to legitimate the empire. A coin minted in Philippi under Claudius (virtually contemporary with Philippians) on which Augustus appears on a pedestal with a traditional Philippian goddess56 crowning him bears testimony to a well-developed syncretism of the imperial cult with local religion. The engraving DIVVS AVG appears on the pedestal. 54. O. Hofius, Der Christushymnus Philipper 2:6-11 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1976), pp. 31–34. 55. N. Elliott, The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of the Empire (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), pp. 121–41. 56. There is archaeological evidence of a variety of female deities at Philippi including Diana, Isis, Magna Mater (Cybele), Hecate, who may be candidates for the identity of the goddess (H. Hendrix, ‘Philippi’, in D. Freedman (ed.), ABD (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 5.316; M. D. Nanos, ‘Paul’s Reversal of Jews Calling Gentiles “Dogs” (Philippians 3.2): 1600 Years of an Ideological Tale of Wagging an Exegetical Dog?’ BibInt 17 (2009), pp. 448–82, esp. 458.



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Figure 8.1: Divus Augustus Coin from Philippi

Figure 8.2: Artistic Representation of the Verso

Permission for use of both images granted on the website, http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Roman%20Statue%20 Bases%20on%20Julio%20Claudian%20Coinage-%20Joe%20Geranio courtesy of the compiler, Joe Geranio

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This numismatic evidence is significant for at least two reasons. First, for 2.6 to say that Christ Jesus did not regard being like God as booty to be grabbed means that he stands in stark contrast to the emperor, as represented on the coin, who does.57 Second, to turn to a quite different discussion, in spite of conventional interpretations of Philippians in terms of an antiJudaean polemic, a straightforward reading places Paul on the side of his own scriptural, theological tradition against Graeco-Roman polytheism as demonstrated on the coin. Interpretations of Philippians in terms of an anti-Judaean polemic depend on three basic features. One is Paul’s statement: ‘For we are the circumcision who serve God in spirit and boast in Christ Jesus and do not put confidence in flesh’ (3.3). A second is Paul’s warning to ‘look out for the mutilation’ (3.4), which somehow has been taken as a vicious parody of circumcision. The third is Paul’s own catalogue of his Israelite credentials, which he is allegedly said to consider as refuse (3.5-7). To deal with the last first, as indicated above in agreement with William Campbell, Paul most assuredly does not consider his own Israelite identity refuse. Rather, he first establishes his Israelite credentials as honourable and then argues by comparison for the surpassing value of knowing Christ. Further, to claim that Paul designates his Israelite credentials refuse is to jump over a significant development in the argument. That is, Paul moves beyond his Israelite heritage to consider ‘everything’ as loss. In fact, the loss of ‘everything’ occurs twice in 3.8. To repeat, Paul begins with the positive value of his Israelite traditions in order to point to the surpassing significance of knowing Christ above ‘everything’ else.58 A part of Paul’s argument from his Israelite credentials is his own circumcision ‘on the eighth day’, which he recalls positively (3.5).59 With this appeal to his own circumcision, it is impossible for him to make a vicious parody on Israelite circumcision as ‘mutilation’. Of course in Romans 2 Paul makes circumcision a matter of the heart beyond an external identity marker. Notably this has a parallel in identity theory in which identity is not merely a concept but the behaviour that results from the roles one plays. Correspondingly, in Romans 2 Paul also argues positively for the Israelite identity of circumcision with the expectation that it will produce appropriate behaviour. The warning to look out for the mutilation, therefore, can hardly be a vicious parody of Israelite circumcision. The warning about mutilation is straightforwardly just that, and it is to be associated with something in the pagan context of Philippi, such as the galli, devotees of Cybele, who castrated themselves, rather than with Israelite practice.60

57. See also Heen, ‘Phil. 2.6-11 and Resistance’, pp. 138–40. 58. See also Nanos, ‘Paul’s Reversal’, p. 481. 59. Nanos notices the positive connotation of circumcision in 3.3 but does not mention it in the case of Paul’s own circumcision in 3.5, which only strengthens its positive implications; ‘Paul’s Reversal’, pp. 479–81. 60. Nanos, ‘Paul’s Reversal’, pp. 475–81.



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Consequently, Paul’s statement ‘we are the circumcision’ cannot be taken as usurping Israel’s prerogatives for a messianic faith separate from Israel’s story. The statement is often paraphrased, ‘We are the true circumcision’, but nothing in the Greek corresponds to ‘true’. Further, the NRSV distorts the Greek toward such an interpretation. The Greek sentence has two attributive participial clauses, the equivalents of which are indicated by italics in the following: ‘We are the circumcision who serve God in spirit and do not put confidence in the flesh.’ This implies that those identified as the circumcision serve God in spirit and do not put confidence in the flesh, close to the way Paul speaks of circumcision in Rom. 2.28-29. When the NRSV introduces a spurious ‘it is’, it creates the equivalent of three attributive participial clauses: ‘It is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God, and [who] have no confidence in the flesh. This rendering more strongly implies, ‘we, not “they”, are the circumcision’, whereas the Greek makes a direct identification: ‘We are the circumcision.’ Is circumcision then another video that Paul plays for the identity of the Philippians? This depends on whether the ‘we’ is inclusive or exclusive. Who is possibly excluded? Philippians 3 contains some strong negative characterizations, the harshest of which is ‘enemies of the cross of Christ’ (3.18). But at no place does Paul mount an apology for himself against such enemies as he does in 2 Corinthians, which uses ‘we’ to exclude his competitors. Rather, the antithesis here is between his addressees and their enemies. Furthermore, the second person plural admonitions in 3.2 establish his addressees as completely distinct from the enemies either in 3.2 or 3.1819, that is, they are distinct from those who are oriented toward earthly things [rule]. In fact, the earthly things to which some are oriented in 3.19 form the antithesis to heavenly citizenship associated with Christ’s lordship. In short, ‘we are the circumcision’ bears no weight of excluding the addressees. Paul’s position elsewhere makes it impossible that he advocates physical circumcision of Gentiles. But does this video portray a role for the addressees that aligns with Israel’s heritage? A fair reading of ‘we are the circumcision’ cannot rule out a video for the Philippians that corresponds to circumcision of the heart in Rom. 2.29. In a recent article, Mark Nanos has demonstrated beyond dispute that, contrary to a very long interpretive tradition, there is no evidence whatsoever of a Jewish practice of calling Gentiles ‘dogs’, a malicious slur that Paul then tosses back at his own people in 3.2. The epithet is never used to refer to Gentiles in scripture, with the possible exception of Jesus and the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 (which Nanos astutely suggests is not an exception) or in Rabbinic Literature. Therefore, Paul’s warning to look out for the dogs needs to be understood in the polytheistic context of Philippi.61 Nanos toys with possible interpretations of the ‘dogs’ about which Paul warns in 3.2. Though he allows for a general epithet covering wide-ranging possibilities, he speculates that a likely referent is the Cynics.62 At this point he 61. Nanos, ‘Paul’s Reversal’, pp. 460–74. 62. Nanos, ‘Paul’s Reversal’, pp. 476–77.

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does not consider the syncretism of the imperial cult with local religion, which I recall from the coin mentioned above which portrays a local Philippian deity crowning Augustus as DIVVS AVG. When this is considered in the context of Paul’s call for a particular poli/teuma under Christ’s lordship in contrast to an earthly way, I suggest that it is more productive to find correspondences between Paul’s warning about dogs and deities such as Diana, Cybele and Hecate, whom Nanos also considers, who were associated with dogs, and who were blended into imperial religion to legitimate citizenship under Caesar’s lordship. 3. Conclusion In sum, Paul plays videos for the Philippians that present potential roles for them by which to reflect on their identity. In face of some harrowing experience that shattered the way Christ-followers at Philippi construed reality and their positive experience of living in Christ that gave them a new outlook on life, Paul portrays the role of citizenship in Philippi. This citizenship is imprinted by the power of God who reversed the attempt to debase Jesus totally for his way of life in obedience to God that stood in tension with the imperial system. It is a way of life ‘in Christ’, that is, in relation to the one whom God made Lord of all, which is nothing less than an alternative to an imperial system, and which is to be embodied in a community of Christ-followers. What is left for the identity of the Philippians is whether the videos Paul puts on the screen moved beyond dreams for reflection to their behaviour.

Chapter 9

‘Christ died for us’: Interpretation of Jesus’ Death as a Central Element the Identity of the Earliest Church

of

Jerry L. Sumney 1. Prolegomena One of the ironies of studies of the earliest church is that they often look askance at the evidence of our earliest documents, the authentic Pauline letters. Even though the earliest Gospel was written twice as long after the death of Jesus as the earliest Pauline letters, interpreters commonly mine those later documents for the views of the first believers and assert that Paul’s letters contain later developments. Even the earlier traditions embedded within these letters are often said to be later products of the church’s reflection or distorted by Paul.1 Clearly, Paul gives his own take to many elements of the tradition, but (as we will see) he also claims to rely on and be consistent with the faith that existed before he joined the church. Perhaps a first step in giving proper weight to the Pauline evidence is to recognize fully how little time elapsed between Jesus’ death and Paul’s Damascus Road experience. While all chronologies of Paul’s life are problematic, his timetable in Galatians 1–2 allows little time between those two events. If Paul’s account indicates that the Jerusalem Conference occurred 17 years after his entrance into the church, it means that Paul must have joined the believers no more than three years after Jesus’ death.2 In that brief

1. Part of the impetus for this move to seek alternative types of adherents to Jesus seems to be a primitivist inclination that implicitly holds that if an idea or perspective existed in the earliest time after the death of Jesus, it possesses some kind of validity not only for the first century but also for today. 2. This calculation assumes that the Council took place no later than 51 ce and the crucifixion no earlier than 30. If the Council was a year earlier and the crucifixion as late as 33 ce, the church was in existence for only a few months before Paul joined the movement. So the estimate of three years seems to be a maximum, unless one understands the Galatian text to suggest that the total amount of time between Paul’s experience and his second trip to Jerusalem was only 14 years.

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period he came to know enough about the church and its teaching to think it posed a serious danger to the Jewish community. So it had developed a body of teachings and/or practices that he thought needed to be eradicated to preserve the integrity of Judaism. Since these beliefs and practices developed before Paul joined the church, the basic tenets and assertions obviously developed very quickly – even as the church would continue to elaborate and explicate those basic claims. We must also acknowledge afresh that Paul did not create Christian doctrine ex nihilo; rather, he joined a community that already affirmed certain things about Jesus – things he had formerly found objectionable. His turn to join this community of faith required him to accept at least the basic affirmations about and interpretations of Jesus that this group proclaimed, including its understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ death. He clearly reflects on that tradition and finds new ways to express it in thought and life, but this does not necessarily mean that he moves in radically new directions. Both the romantic view of Paul as the Lone Ranger of truth among those who would pervert the gospel and that which sees him as the demonic deifier of the simple yet profound teacher, the Man from Nazareth, lose sight of the way he was anchored in the thought of the broader church. We see this not least in his work as a missionary of the Antioch church. That congregation and its leaders have enough confidence in him and the coherence of his theology with theirs that they sponsor him as a junior partner of Barnabas on a mission tour. We have no indication that his eventual break with that congregation caused him to reassess all the understandings of Jesus he had garnered while there. In fact, his later references to Barnabas (e.g., 1 Corinthians 9) suggest that his beliefs remained mostly consistent with what he participated in and learned at Antioch.3 (And apparently, the Antioch church assumed that the faith of the believers in Damascus was close enough to theirs that they were willing to recruit Paul in the first place.) So too does Paul’s desire to maintain relations with the Jerusalem church indicate that he believes he maintains a significant consistency with its understanding of the new faith. This does not, of course, cast doubt on the existence of diversity among believers in Christ in the early church. As we will see below, there were significant differences that involved crucial issues about the shape of the community, the proper ways to express faith in Christ, and models of leadership. These differences were deep and of theological importance. But when parties invest such energy in defending their understanding of a community, it indicates that they also share a core identity that contains significant elements that neither party questions. This chapter examines the evidence of the Pauline letters to determine whether giving attention to the meaning of Jesus’ death was a constitutive element of the identity of the earliest church. 3. Furthermore, if Acts is reliable in locating Barnabas as a member of the Jerusalem community before going to Antioch (and Luke thinks this is at least plausible to his readers), it secures important ties between the theology of the Antioch church and that of the original church in Jerusalem.



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2. Evidence for the Views of Other Believers in Paul’s letters At least two kinds of evidence appear in Paul’s letters that allow us to see how others in the church approached the faith and what they found to be important. Paul’s opposition to some beliefs that members of his churches adopt or are thinking about accepting point us to some of the diversity that existed within the early church. As we will note, some of this diversity springs from within the churches he founded and some comes to those cells of believers from outside. Paul finds some differences compatible with the gospel, others he rejects vigorously. But each difference provides some glimpse of the diversity within the churches. The second source of information from which we may glean information about others in the church derives from the places Paul cites traditions known within and beyond his churches. These traditional formulations provide evidence for the beliefs of the church both contemporaneous with Paul and formulated prior to his joining the movement. We will begin our search for beliefs and practices of others within the church by looking at beliefs Paul opposes in his letters. 3. Those Opposed and Otherwise Described by Paul I have given attention to those Paul opposes in his letters elsewhere and so will not repeat all the arguments I have marshalled in those places for the views of them I express here.4 I will note views of others that may bear on our topic here and give some reasons for not adopting those views. I will begin with Paul’s earliest letter and move through the collection in something resembling chronological order.5 3.1 1 Thessalonians Some interpreters think Paul opposes Pneumatics in 1 Thessalonians. Jewett and Harnisch argue that these teachers claim this superior measure of possession of the Spirit because of their over-realized eschatology, which also leads them to be antinomians.6 Donfried and Lambrecht find no doctrinal 4. See my ‘Servants of Satan’, ‘False Brothers’, and Other Opponents of Paul (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) and ‘Studying Paul’s Opponents: Advances and Challenges’, in S. E. Porter (ed.), Paul and His Opponents, Pauline Studies 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 7–58. I will draw heavily on these writings throughout this section of my chapter. 5. I will not treat Philemon here since Paul does not oppose any teaching or practice there. Neither will I examine the disputed letters, since any evidence we might gain from them is questionable. 6. W. Harnisch, Eschatologische Existenz; Ein exegetischer Beitrag zum Sachanliegen von 1 Thessalonicher 4,13-5,11 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), pp. 27–37; R. Jewett, The Thessalonian Correspondence: Pauline Rhetoric and Millenarian Piety (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1986), pp. 94–106.

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controversy, but only personal attacks against Paul.7 Perhaps the largest number of interpreters finds no intruding group of teachers, but only a controversy aroused because some in the church have quit their jobs to simply await the imminent parousia.8 None of these hypotheses envisions a controversy that involves questions about the centrality of the death of Jesus. Neither its importance nor its meaning is a topic of discussion. When the subject comes up, it is spoken of only in passing (2.15) or to support another point (4.14). Thus knowledge of it is assumed and Jesus’ death and resurrection serve as the paradigm for the way God will deal with those who die before the parousia (4.14). There is no evidence for any controversy about the meaning of the death of Jesus, but Paul does explicate its meaning so that it addresses concerns the readers have about believers who have died. 3.2 1 Corinthians First Corinthians is testimony to the difficulty believers had integrating their new beliefs into their communal and social lives. This letter serves as the foundation of Walter Schmithals’ thesis that Gnostics are the opponents Paul faces in all his letters.9 Most interpreters now recognize that Gnosticism did not develop into the kind of system or movement Schmithals presupposes in his work until some time in the second century (if ever). Yet there is some emphasis on acquiring wisdom and knowledge through the Spirit that certain interpreters think has a connection with the wisdom traditions in Hellenistic Judaism.10 Although some connections can be drawn between the outlook Paul opposes and occasional particulars of various strands of Jewish wisdom traditions, the evidence is insufficient to assert that teachers at Corinth want the congregation to adopt a dramatically different understanding of Christ. A number of interpreters follow F. C. Baur in finding teachers who demand that Gentile believers undergo circumcision and begin to observe the law 7. K. P. Donfried, ‘The Cults of Thessalonica and the Thessalonian Correspondence’, NTS 31 (1985), pp. 350–51; J. Lambrecht, ‘Thanksgivings in 1 Thessalonians 1–3’, in R. Collins (ed.), The Thessalonian Correspondence (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990), p. 200. 8. E.g., B. Rigaux, Saint Paul Les Epitres aux Thessaloniciens (Paris: Gabalda, 1956), p. 59; Ch. Masson, Les Deux Epitre de Saint Paul aux Thessaloniciens (Neuchâtel: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1957), p. 32; A. Malherbe, ‘“Gentle as a Nurse”: The Cynic Background to 1 Thessalonians 2’, NovT 12 (1970), pp. 203–17; R. F. Collins, ‘Paul as Seen Through His Own Eyes’, in Studies on the First Epistle to the Thessalonians (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1984), p. 184; Sumney, Servants of Satan, pp. 214–28. 9. Gnosticism in Corinth (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1971); Paul and the Gnostics (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1972). He continues to hold this basic position in his more recent The Theology of the First Christians (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), a translation of his Theologiegeschichte des Urchristentums (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1994). 10. B. A. Pearson, The Pneumatikos-Psychikos Terminology in 1 Corinthians (Missoula, MT: SBL, 1973); R. A. Horsley, ‘Gnosis in Corinth: 1 Cor. 8.1-6’, NTS 27 (1979), pp. 32–51; G. Sellin, ‘Das “Geheimnis” der Weisheit und das Rätsel der “Christuspartei” (zu 1 Kor 1–4)’, ZNW 73 (1982), pp. 70–71.



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as a condition for church membership or salvation. Barrett and Lüdemann (among others) argue that these teachers have some connection with the Jerusalem church.11 Evidence for this hypothesis is limited to the mention of Cephas in 1.12; there is no discussion of whether Torah observance is necessary for Gentiles in the letter. Thus, this view rests primarily on the broader reconstruction that sees Torah observance for Gentiles as the primary issue Paul must confront everywhere throughout most of his ministry – a hypothesis that is not sustainable. Most interpreters, however, see the basic problem as one that involves a spirit of competitiveness among the Corinthians that expresses itself in various ways,12 perhaps through their claims about possession of the Spirit that they say authorizes the various stances they take. If there is some teaching of (later) Gnosticism or an attachment to wisdom thought, these theologies might (Gnosticism’s certainly would) entail a Christology that is different from Paul’s and that would interpret the death of Jesus in ways Paul would find objectionable. But 1 Corinthians contains no refutation of an alternative Christology and no defence of a particular understanding of the death of Jesus. Indeed, as we will see when looking at traditions Paul quotes, he assumes that the Corinthian church agrees with the basic understanding of Jesus’ death that Paul asserts is the view he was taught and that he taught them. 3.3 2 Corinthians However many letters an editor used to compose 2 Corinthians, interpreters are generally agreed that the situation they address has a basic continuity – at least they all address the same opponents. Following Baur, many interpreters have found opponents who demand Torah observance of Gentiles.13 Given the absence of explicit attention to this matter (chapter 3 hardly constitutes a response to such teaching), this seems unlikely. Schmithals finds Gnostics 11. G. Lüdemann, Opposition to Paul in Jewish Christianity (trans. M. E. Boring; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1989), pp. 69–80; C. K. Barrett, ‘Deuteropauline Ethics: Some Observations’, in E. Lovering and J. L. Sumney (eds), Theology and Ethics in Paul and His Interpreters: Essays in Honor of Victor Paul Furnish (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1996), p. 172. 12. This view follows N. Dahl, ‘Paul and the Church at Corinth according to 1 Corinthians 1.10–4:21’, in W. R. Farmer, C. F. D. Moule and R. Niehbuhr (eds), Christian History and Interpretation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 313–35. See also M. M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), pp. 297–302. 13. C. K. Barrett, ‘Paul’s Opponents in 2 Corinthi­ans’, NTS 17 (1971), pp. 233–54; idem, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 28–36; Lüdemann, Opposition to Paul; S. Hafemann, Suffering and the Spirit: An Exegetical Study of II Cor. 2:14–3:3 within the Context of the Corinthian Correspondence (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1986).

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here just as he does in 1 Corinthians. Georgi, however, finds travelling Hellenistic Jewish wonder-workers, divine men, as the opponents in this text.14 The serious questions that have been raised about the prevalence of that sort of movement call this reconstruction into question.15 Furthermore, his connections between his reconstruction and the issues in 2 Corinthians are insufficient to support his thesis. He does, however, see clearly that the issues revolve around how God acts through those whom God commissions. The more likely view is that a group of travelling preachers has come to Corinth making claims about their possession of the Spirit that Paul finds unacceptable and incompatible with the gospel. They assert that the Spirit gives them a commanding presence, the power to perform mighty acts, and the right to be apostles. Furthermore, the Spirit authorizes them to tell of their powers and exercise them to make demands on the church. They also actively oppose Paul’s apostleship. Whichever view one takes of the opponents of 2 Corinthians, the only theological issues Paul discusses at length involve the proper understanding of apostleship and leadership in the church. The cross is an important element in Paul’s argument, but he assumes the church already recognizes the cross as a central part of the church’s message. He engages in no polemic against the other teachers’ understanding of the centrality of Jesus’ death and the implicit differences in their conceptions of it concern only how it should shape one’s view of leadership in the community.16 3.4 Galatians Perhaps the most likely place to look for arguments about the meaning of Jesus’ death is Galatians, where Paul is engaged in fierce polemic about the meaning of the gospel and even speaks of ‘another gospel’. This letter clearly engages teachers who want Gentiles to accept circumcision. Unfortunately, it is less clear why this is the case. Most interpreters think these teachers are believers in Christ who argue that Gentiles must convert to Judaism to be full members of the people of God or to be saved. Many think they are representative of the Jerusalem church or members of an anti-Pauline movement who oppose not only Paul’s teaching about Torah observance for

14. The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1986). 15. See C. Holladay, Theios aner in Hellenistic-Judaism: A Critique of the Use of this Category in New Testament Christology (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977). 16. Even if David Horrell is correct that Paul’s mention of another Jesus in 11.4 signals that there is a controversy about Christology (‘“No Longer Jew or Greek”: Paul’s Corporate Christology and the Construction of Christian Identity’, in D. G. Horrell and C. M. Tuckett (eds), Christology, Controversy and Community: New Testament Essays in Honour of David R. Catchpole (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 321–44 (here pp. 331–32), he finds no disagreement about the importance of the death of Jesus.



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Gentiles but also reject his claim to be an apostle.17 Some interpreters modify this view significantly, arguing that the matter of Torah observance is more about how Jews should receive Gentiles in the eschatological period than about whether they can be saved without circumcision.18 Though Galatians contains much autobiographical material, it seems unlikely that the people who disturb this church attack Paul’s apostleship, because they seem to claim that he agrees with their position (5.11).19 Furthermore, Paul never takes up charges against his apostleship directly, as he does in 2 Corinthians when he knows it is being questioned. The above hypotheses all assume that those Paul rejects are fellow believers in Christ. But some interpreters of Galatians argue that they are non-Christ-believing Jews who view these Gentile church members as possible candidates for full conversion to Judaism. According to this view, such Jews still consider the church to be fully within Judaism, so their interaction with its members is not surprising.20 If the problem Galatians addresses comes from people who claim no attachment to Jesus, they obviously have a different view of his death than Paul or others within the church. Even so, they would not contribute to our present search, because they claim no connection to Jesus. Thus, they will not help us understand how adherents to Jesus understood his death as they constructed the identity of their community. Galatians, however, seems to assume that the opponents are believers in Christ. Paul apparently feels no need to argue that Christ’s death imparts soteriological benefits on believers. He assumes all members of his audience are convinced of this central matter. He does, on the other hand, set out dire soteriological consequences of Gentiles taking up Torah observance (they will be cut off from Christ, 5.2). Despite giving arguments that involve soteriology and proper behaviour for believers, the importance of the death of Jesus is not an issue. Paul’s arguments all assume that the readers, including those he opposes, believe that death to be foundational for the church. Indeed, even though he calls this other teaching ‘another gospel’ and says they proclaim 17. E.g., E. deWitt Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1921), pp. liv–lv; P. Bonnard, ‘L’Épitre de Saint Paul aux Philippiens’, Commentaire du Nouveau Testament, Vol. 10 (Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1950), pp. 12–14. Franz Mussner thinks the opponents require Torah observance for salvation but does not think they are connected with Jerusalem (Der Galaterbrief [Freiburg: Herder, 1974], pp. 12–26). 18. E.g., J. D. G. Dunn, ‘The Theology of Galatians: The Issue of Covenantal Nomism’, in J. M. Bassler (ed.), Pauline Theology, Volume 1 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), pp. 128–31; F. Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 49–61. Similarly, J. M. G. Barclay, Obeying the Truth: A Study of Paul’s Ethics in Galatians (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), pp. 54–60. 19. See also G. Lyons, Pauline Autobiography: Toward a New Understanding (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1985). 20. E.g. M. D. Nanos, The Irony of Galatians (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002); idem, ‘Intruding “Spies” and “Pseudo-Brethren”: The Jewish Intra-Group Politics of Paul’s Jerusalem Meeting (Gal 2:1–10)’, in Porter (ed.), Paul and His Opponents, pp. 59–97.

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‘another Christ’, there is no indication that this other gospel leaves out or diminishes the importance of Jesus’ death. Indeed, his statements in 3.19 (‘I have been crucified with Christ’) and 21 (‘If righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died for nothing’; cf. 5.11) assume that all his readers agree that the death of Jesus is crucial and has soteriological efficacy. Then in 6.12 he says they want to avoid persecution on account of ‘the cross of Christ’. This statement also assumes that Jesus’ death plays a significant part in their theology. Furthermore, Paul’s relating of his trips to Jerusalem indicates that he and the Jerusalem church agree on the core elements of the gospel – however much independence he may want to claim. The meaning of the death of Jesus was clearly part of that core for Paul, and his argument assumes that all of his readers and the church in Jerusalem agree about this. Paul builds arguments from his view of the meaning of Jesus’ death, but does not seem to expect anyone to question that premise. 3.5 Philippians If Philippians is a composite text, the letters that make it up may address multiple types of teaching and practice that Paul rejects. Many interpreters, however, see a single type of opponent. Some find an over-realized eschatology that claims a fuller measure of the Spirit than other believers possess.21 According to some interpreters, the teachers of this view assert that God will give this gift to those who adopt Torah observance.22 Of course, some find Gnostics as the enemy here. A number of interpreters have found multiple types of opponents in Philippians. Some find Gnostic libertines along with people who demand Torah observance for Gentiles.23 Jewett argues that Paul’s comment in 3.18 indicates that these opponents are Gnostics because they are ‘enemies of the cross of Christ’. This comment, he contends, shows that they have no place for the cross in their soteriology.24 The context, flow of the argument, and nature of Paul’s comment, however, suggest otherwise. The context of this accusation is clearly opposition to the view that Gentiles must adopt Torah observance. Paul argues throughout chapter 3 that he gave up any privilege associated with Torah observance for the richer blessings gained through identification with Christ. Verses 12-16 make it clear that the wealth of blessings he possesses does not obviate the need to 21. E.g., J. Gnilka, Der Philipperbrief (Freiburg: Herder, 1968), p. 197; J. Reumann, ‘Philippians 3:20–21 – A Hymnic Fragment?’ NTS 30 (1984), pp. 593–609. 22. H. Koester, ‘The Purpose of the Polemic of a Pauline Fragment (Philippians III)’, NTS 8 (1961/2), pp. 317–32. 23. J. Ernst, Die Briefe an die Philipper, an Philemon, an die Kolosser, an die Epheser (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1974), p. 25. 24. R. Jewett, ‘The Epistolary Thanksgiving and the Integrity of Philippians’, NovT 12 (1970), pp. 45–46; ‘Conflicting Movements in the Early Church as Reflected in Philippians’, NovT 12 (1970), pp. 378–80.



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strive to live up to what he has received in Christ. Verse 17 then calls the readers to imitate him in such striving. Throughout Philippians Paul supports his arguments by alternating between good and bad examples. So also here, Paul tells his readers to imitate him and others who live as he does. Then, in v. 18 he raises the spectre of bad examples: some people live as enemies of the cross. It is not clear that these people claim any attachment to Jesus and they may even be persecutors; Paul is, after all, in prison for his preaching when he writes this letter. Indeed, Paul could easily describe himself as a former enemy of the cross. Furthermore, this statement is not straightforwardly descriptive. It is a polemical caricature designed to distinguish dramatically the manner of life he advocates from an ambiguous alternative. The stark alternatives he sets out are: (a) Paul and (b) those whose god is their belly. Describing them as enemies of the cross is the same type of caricature as saying they worship their belly and exalt in shameful behaviour. The function of the contrast becomes clear in v. 20; the enemies of the cross whose end is destruction and who worship their belly and love shamefulness have earthly minds in contrast to ‘us’. ‘Our’ citizenship is in heaven, not on the earth, so ‘our’ behaviour must be completely different from those mentioned in vv. 18-19. In dramatic terms, Paul asserts that the church is radically different from everything around it – the church belongs to a different realm – and must live out that difference in its conduct. Given this function of the descriptions in vv. 18-19, it seems unlikely that Paul is speaking of other people who claim a connection to Jesus but have a different understanding of his death. If he does intend to oppose such a view, he provides no reasons for rejecting their teaching: he offers no defence of his position (which the Philippians already knew) and no argument against theirs. Given his willingness to engage various issues in this and other letters, it seems unlikely that he would pass over this matter with just a few disparaging descriptors of its bearers’ character. More direct engagement with the issue would have been forthcoming if Paul had thought his church was encountering a significantly different understanding of Jesus’ death. Chapter 3 does suggest that Paul knows of a movement that travels to his churches and advocates Torah observance for Gentiles. He warns the Philippians about this movement that he assumes will get there, if they have not already arrived, but the text does not indicate that they are having success in Philippi when he writes. 3.6 Romans Paul’s letter to the Romans is not primarily a response to teaching that he finds unacceptable, though he probably tries to dispel some ideas about what he teaches that have reached Rome.25 While debate continues about the purposes 25. See S. E. Porter, ‘Did Paul Have Opponents in Rome and What Were They Opposing?’, in Porter (ed.), Paul and His Opponents, pp. 149–68.

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of Romans, Paul’s explication of his own understanding of the work of Christ dominates; albeit with some responses to views others might attribute to him or claim are consequences of his views (e.g., 6.1-2). In his search for signs of opposition to Paul in Romans, Stanley Porter finds five questions that have been raised about Paul in Rome: (1) they wonder why he has not come sooner, (2) they question his understanding of spiritual gifts, (3) they wonder if he has been avoiding visiting them, (4) some are concerned that he has abandoned Judaism, and (5) there may be questions about his apostolic status.26 None of these issues directly focuses attention on the death of Jesus or its meaning. Paul does seem to acknowledge some dispute about the meaning of belief in Christ for Torah observance among Gentile believers, and even for Jewish believers (chapters 3–4 and 14 perhaps reflect this dispute). Paul’s discussion of the place of Israel could be an aspect of some dispute about the meaning of Jesus’ death. If so, Paul gives no indication that the argument involves any positions that doubt the importance of that death – the argument would be about its meaning in relation to God’s covenant with Israel, not about whether it is important. But if this issue involves interpretation of Jesus’ death, Paul gives no indication that it does. His arguments in chapters 3–8 assume that his readers believe Jesus’ death is important; he gives interpretations of that death, but does not defend its importance. As we will see below, Paul cites some traditional material about Jesus’ death in Romans that he seems to assume his readers know and that he assumes will bolster his position. 3.7 Summary The evidence of Paul’s letters suggests that there are two anti-Pauline movements; one advocates Torah observance for Gentiles and the other questions Paul’s apostleship because of the way they believe the Spirit empowers apostles. Paul’s disputes with these groups do not involve christological issues or questions about the relationship between the earthly Jesus and the risen Christ or even the assumption that the death of Jesus is important for understanding his person or work. There is not even an argument about whether Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection constitute an eschatological event that brings Gentiles into the people of God; there is a question about how to admit them, but not about whether to admit them. So Paul’s presentations of the people he opposes in his letters offers no evidence of the existence of adherents to Jesus who do not make the death of Jesus a central element of their faith and a constitutive part of their identity as members of the church. Indeed, he assumes that they all believe Jesus’ death is salvific.

26.

Ibid.



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4. Paul’s Citations of Earlier Material Paul’s use of preformed materials may provide another way for us to discover something about the place of Jesus’ death among adherents to Jesus who are different from him and even predate his entrance into the church. In a few places (e.g., 1 Cor. 15.1-5), Paul explicitly says he is quoting a tradition. In other places, however, he seems to recite a part of a known tradition to support his argument without directly noting that he is inserting it. Since such a move usually assumes the readers will recognize the piece, he does not need to call attention to its presence for it to bolster his argument. But such citations are more difficult for us to identify. Ellis lists four criteria for identifying preformed material in Paul’s letters: (1) the presence of an introductory formula that indicates a tradition is being cited, (2) the passage has a kind of ‘self-contained’ character, (3) the vocabulary of a passage is different from the author’s, and (4) a similar piece appears in another author who is independent of the text at hand.27 Earlier, Neufeld listed further criteria that he saw being used by others and that he employed in his search for confessional material. These include: (1) use of hoti, double accusatives, and infinitives as introductions; (2) use of homologia, its cognates, synonyms, and antonyms; and (3) the presence of relative clauses and participial phrases introducing the credal material.28 Using these criteria will help us identify where Paul is citing a preformed tradition. We will look primarily at passages about which there is wide agreement about the presence of such material. 4.1 1 Corinthians 15.3-5 One of the clearest places where Paul cites a tradition is 1 Cor. 15.3-5. Interpreters disagree about where the citation ends, but all agree that it includes vv. 3b-5. Not only does Paul introduce this citation with language used of passing on tradition, but he also speaks of sin in the plural, mentions ‘the Twelve’, and uses ‘according to the Scriptures’ multiple times.29 These are all unusual for Paul. Paul’s introduction of this confession asserts that this is the tradition he had received and that he passed to them. Moreover, he says it contains the 27. E. E. Ellis, ‘Preformed Traditions and Their Implications for Pauline Christology’, in Horrell and Tucket (eds), Christology, Controversy and Community, pp. 303–20, esp. 309. 28. V. H. Neufeld, The Earliest Christian Confesssions (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1963), p. 12. 29. For reasons to identify this passage as a tradition see A. M. Hunter, Paul and His Predecessors, rev. edn (London: SCM, 1961), pp. 15–16; B. Gerhardsson, ‘Evidence for Christ’s Resurrection According to Paul: 1 Cor 15:1-11’, in D. Aune, T. Seland and J. H. Ulrichsen (eds), Neotestamentica et Philonica: Studies in Honor of Peder Borgen (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 73–91, esp. 79.

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heart of the faith. This foundational statement not only sets out the centrality of the death of Jesus, but also gives it an expiatory function. Although a number of interpreters in the early and middle twentieth century argued that this confession originated in Hellenistic churches30 and so was not known in Jerusalem, most now acknowledge that it arose within Palestinian circles of the earliest church.31 Borgen, Gerhardsson and Hurtado argue that the earliest Jerusalem church needed an interpretation of Jesus’ death that countered and opposed the common meanings of crucifixion, including that Jesus was a false messiah or that he died because of his own sin.32 Perhaps the martyrdom traditions within Judaism (e.g., those in 4 Maccabees) supplied materials that helped the Jerusalem church develop this tradition. Hurtado notes that this passage shows that the Jerusalem church already identifies Jesus as the Messiah (because it refers to Jesus as Christ with no qualification) and gives a messianic interpretation to his death and resurrection.33 This confessional piece also indicates that the earliest church interpreted the life, death and resurrection of Jesus through the lens of scripture. Thus, it was a community

30. E.g. Hunter, Paul and His Predecessors, pp. 16–17 (though he changed his mind when he revised the book in 1961, see pp. 117–18); H. Conzelmann, ‘On the Analysis of the Confessional Formula in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5’, Int 20 (1965), pp. 15–25 and 1 Corinthians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1975, translation of his 1969 work), pp. 252–54, where he denies Jeremias’ claims that the passage has signs of an Aramaic origin. While he does not give attention to 1 Corinthians 15, S. K. Williams (Jesus’ Death as Saving Event: The Background and Origin of the Concept [Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975], p. 231) argues that the Palestinian church had no need for the idea of an expiatory death to explain Jesus’ death. 31. E.g., Gerhardsson, ‘Evidence for Christ’s Resurrection’, in Aune, Seland and Ulrichsen (eds), Neotestamentica et Philonica, pp. 73–91, esp. 79–82; M. Hengel, Studies in Early Christology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), p. 11; L. W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 101. Cf. P. Stuhlmacher, Reconciliation, Law, and Righteousness: Essays in Biblical Theology (transl. E. Kalin; Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1997), p. 52. 32. P. Borgen, ‘Crucified for His Own Sins—Crucified for Our Sins: Observations on a Pauline Perspective’, in J. Fotopoulos (ed.), The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 17–35, esp. 18. Idem, ‘Openly Portrayed as Crucified: Some Observations on Gal 3:1-14’, in Horrell and Tuckett (eds), Christology, Controversy and Community, pp. 345–53, esp. 346; Gerhardsson, ‘Evidence’, pp. 81–82; Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, p. 131. So also O. Cullmann, The Earliest Christian Confessions (London: Lutterworth, 1949), p. 32 and N. Dahl, The Crucified Messiah and Other Essays (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1974), pp. 34–35. 33. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, p. 101. Such an interpretation also shows that they gave these actions an eschatological meaning. See the comments of R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament Vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1954), p. 44 and P. Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, 2nd edn (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2000), pp. 136–38. Similarly, Conzelmann (‘On the Analysis of the Confessional Formula’, p. 22) argues that the selection of twelve as the leaders shows that the community has an eschatological outlook.



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that gave attention to interpretation of scripture.34 A number of scholars also assert that this confession requires a passion narrative to explain how these events occurred.35 Paul’s clearest reference to views of believers beyond his circle and before his admission to the church points to a community that gives sustained attention and emphasis to the death of Jesus – and this within the earliest years of the Jerusalem church. This suggests that attention to the death of Jesus as salvific is neither a creation of Paul nor of the influence of paganism beyond Palestine. But we need to look to other passages before drawing such a conclusion. 4.2 1 Corinthians 11.23-26 Paul also identifies his account of the words at the Last Supper as a tradition he had received and has passed on to the Corinthians (v. 23).36 The recitation of this account of a tradition may have been prepared for by the earlier reference to tradition in 11.2, a passage which indicates that Paul sees part of his apostolic task to be passing on traditions of the church that had been passed to him.37 Beyond these direct statements that identify vv. 24-25 (26) as traditional material, the passage contains vocabulary that appears only here in Paul.38 There is some debate about whether this tradition is older than that in Mark and whether this form goes back to Palestine or the Hellenistic church in Antioch or Damascus. In either case, this is a tradition that probably predates Paul’s entrance into the church; it goes back to his time in Syria and Cilicia at least.39 Its early development suggests that the church did not need to draw on non-Jewish ideas of cult meals to develop the understanding of Jesus’ death found in this tradition. The church may have drawn on the Jewish tradition of having meals that commemorate important events (e.g., the Passover).40 34. O. Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1959), p. 76 asserts that this tradition is an interpretation of Isaiah 53 and its suffering servant. This is probably more specific than the evidence allows. The references to interpretation of Scripture in this confession count powerfully against the characterizations of various Jesus admirers Crossan gives (see below). 35. E.g., Gerhardsson, ‘Evidence’, pp. 89–90. 36. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, p. 196, says that v. 23 shows that Paul ‘classifies himself as a link in a chain of tradition’. There has been some debate about whether this is a tradition Paul received or whether he is claiming to have received this by revelation. Most interpreters now accept that it is traditional material. The language Paul uses to introduce it fits this view much better, as does the unusual vocabulary. 37. So V. P. Furnish, Jesus According to Paul (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 27–28; J. D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 186. 38. Among them: deipneō, hosakis, anamnēsis. See Hunter, Paul and His Predecessors, pp. 19–20. 39. So Hengel, Early Christology, p. 43. 40. So Hunter, Paul and His Predecessors, p. 21, following Lohmeyer.

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As Conzelmann notes, there is no evidence that the early disciples saw their meals together as a continuation of their fellowship at table with Jesus.41 It is more probable that this tradition developed in connection with a memorial or commemorative meal – which would have fit well with many ideas in the broader Graeco-Roman world when the church spread beyond having mostly Jews as members. This tradition clearly proclaims that Jesus’ death was for the benefit of his disciples. It says explicitly that his body is broken ‘for you’ and gives the shedding of his blood the function of creating a new covenant between them and God. Furthermore, this tradition not only serves to remind the hearers of Jesus’ death; it directly interprets the rite as such a reminder and includes an exhortation to remember it. Although we cannot reconstruct the exact form of the tradition (there was probably not just one version of it in circulation)42 and cannot know whether or how much of it might go back to Jesus, we can be confident that this understanding of the death of Jesus predates Paul’s entrance into the church.43 If it is correct that this form of the tradition developed in Syria or Arabia, it shows that the church in that area understood Jesus’ death as a covenant sacrifice and therefore in some way vicarious. They thus understand their relationship with God and their identity as the church to be grounded in their attachment to Jesus and his death. Moreover, Carroll and Green seem correct when they assert that this tradition assumes a passion narrative.44 This passage indicates that churches in regions outside Palestine understood Jesus’ death as central to the faith and as vicarious (in some sense) in the years that immediately follow that death. This is not a novel idea Paul applies to that death, but a part of its interpretation that the Syrian or Arabian church already holds.45 Such a celebration coheres well with the emphasis on Jesus’ death seen in 1 Cor. 15.3-5.

41. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, pp. 200–01. 42. Ibid. G. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), p. 547, for example, thinks Paul alters the tradition to emphasize remembrance. 43. This may well have been one of the things about the church’s understanding of Jesus that led Paul to oppose it. 44. J. Carroll and J. Green, The Death of Jesus in Early Christianity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), p. 120. So also G. F. Wessels, ‘The Historical Jesus and the Letters of Paul’, pp. 27–51, esp. 33, in C. Breytenbach, J. C. Thom and J. Punt (eds), The New Testament Interpreted: Essays in Honour of Bernard C. Lategan (Leiden: Brill, 2006), following Neirynck. 45. If the tradition goes back to the Jerusalem church, then it is further evidence of a sustained focus on Jesus’ death in the earliest days of the church.



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4.3 Romans 3.24-26 Most interpreters find Paul citing a tradition in Rom. 3.24-26, though a number of recent commentators reject this idea.46 The number of Pauline hapax legomena47 and the difficult structure of the sentence count in favour of Paul’s use of a tradition. Those who see traditional material here are divided over where to locate Pauline insertions, but all agree that the tradition includes reference to the death of Jesus as a hilaste¯rion, to God’s pare¯isis of previously committed sin, and to God’s forbearance. Interpreters are also divided over whether this tradition comes from the Hellenistic or Palestinian church. Sam Williams has argued extensively that the citation is from the Hellenistic church and addresses the issue of God’s lack of action against the nations for their sins.48 He contends that the tradition’s use of hilastērion confirms this arena for its development because its only contemporaneous use to mean expiation is found in 4 Maccabees, a document of fully Hellenized Judaism. Most interpreters, however, continue to believe it originated in ‘Jewish Christianity’,49 often because they understand hilastērion to be a reference to the lid of the ark of the covenant.50 Among those who identify ‘Jewish Christianity’ as its sources, Meyer and Stuhlmacher assert that it comes from the Stephen circle because it includes a critique of the temple.51 We do not need to settle the contested issues about whether various phrases are Pauline insertions for our purposes since all agree that the tradition focuses attention on the death of Jesus as a means of expiating sin. If it originates among believers who critique the temple, they still find its symbols meaningful. If, as Williams argues, this formula developed in the face of the conversion of Gentiles, it must have its roots in the first years after Jesus’ 46. E.g., C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), p. 200, n. 1; D. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 220; N. T. Wright, ‘The Letter to the Romans’, in NIB 10, pp. 466–67. 47. The three are hilastērion, paresis, and progegonota hamartēmata (with sins in the plural) and the unusual reference (for Paul) to Jesus’ blood rather than cross. See Jewett, Romans, pp. 270–71 for a summary of reasons for finding a citation here. 48. S. K. Williams, Jesus’ Death as Saving Event: The Background and Origin of the Concept (Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1975), pp. 32–34, passim. 49. E.g., Bultmann, Theology, p. 47; E. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), p. 95, Dahl, Crucified Messiah, p. 155; J. D. G. Dunn, ‘Paul’s Understanding of the Death of Jesus as a Sacrifice’, in S. W. Sykes (ed.), Sacrifice and Redemption: Durham Essays in Theology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 35–56, esp. 41–43; J. L. Martyn, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1997), p. 142. 50. Dahl (Crucified Messiah, p. 155), however, argues the tradition alludes to the Akedah as well. 51. B. F. Meyer, ‘The Pre-Pauline Formula in Rom. 3.25-26a’, NTS 29 (1983), pp. 198–208; P. Stuhlmacher, Reconciliation, Law, and Righteousness: Essays in Biblical Theology (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1986), pp. 99–104. This position is very similar to that of Williams.

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death because there were already Gentiles in the church when Paul joins it.52 This may point us to Antioch or perhaps Damascus. Whether it originates in Palestine or Syria, Paul assumes it is a known and accepted formulation of the faith. He perhaps includes it here to emphasize ‘the common foundation of belief he shares with the Christians in Rome’.53 4.4 Romans 4.25 Most interpreters think Paul cites another tradition to describe the work of Christ in Rom. 4.25.54 Its introduction with a relative pronoun, its parallel clauses, its use of language known to be in the tradition (particularly paradidōmi), and the substitution of the preposition hyper (Paul’s usual choice) with dia, all suggest that it comes from the tradition.55 Bultmann identifies this as a formula that existed before Paul came into the church and as evidence that the earliest church saw Jesus’ death as expiatory.56 Stuhlmacher argues on linguistic grounds that this formula comes from Jerusalem.57 Interpreters are unanimous in holding that the language of being ‘handed over’ comes from Isa. 53.12.58 This passage is clear evidence that the originators of this confession drew on Isaiah 53 to interpret Jesus’ death. Thus, the idea that Jesus’ death was expiatory arose among the earliest believers perhaps in Palestine and they made sense of the idea with their interpretations of scripture. It is also interesting to note that this passage uses the noun dikaiōsis to describe the effect of Jesus’ resurrection (or better the single event of his death and resurrection). Surprisingly, this noun appears only one other time in Paul

52. Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, p. 135, asserts that the message about Jesus was in diaspora synagogues within two years of Jesus’ death. It may even have happened within the first year. 53. Hengel, Early Christology, p. 140. 54. So, for example, Käsemann, Romans, p. 128; Cranfield, Romans, p. 251; J. D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8 (Waco, TX: Word, 1988), p. 224; Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, p. 128; Martyn, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul p. 142. Dunn (Romans, p. 224) calls it a ‘well established formulation in earliest Christianity’. Moo (Romans, p. 288) is less certain but acknowledges this as a possibility. R. Jewett (Romans: A Commentary [Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007], p. 342) thinks that the language is from the tradition, but that the style is Paul’s. 55. See Hunter, Paul’s Predecessors, pp. 30–31 and Käsemann, Romans, p. 128, who adds that v. 24 provides a ‘solemn introduction’. Neufeld (The Earliest Christian Confession, pp. 45–47) adds that the antithesis of death and resurrection is also a common sign of traditional material. 56. Theology 1, pp. 46, 82. Dahl, Crucified Christ, pp. 157 and 188, sees another allusion to the Akedah here. 57. Reconciliation, p. 55. In this he accepts as evidence the Semiticisms Jeremias identifies. 58. Cranfield (Romans, pp. 251–52) asserts that the language of ‘justification’ also comes from Isa. 53.11.



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(Rom. 5.18).59 This provides further evidence that Paul is citing a tradition and that the tradition before Paul interpreted Jesus’ death as providing ‘justification’.60 Thus, as important as justification is to Paul’s exposition of the gospel in Romans and Galatians, it is an element he has taken over from the tradition – though he does of course develop it in his own way.61 4.5 Philippians 2.6-11 Most interpreters continue to identify Phil. 2.6-11 as a preformed liturgical piece that Paul adopts and adapts to use in his letter.62 Its elevated style, beginning with a relative pronoun, and non-Pauline vocabulary all support this conclusion.63 We need not occupy ourselves here with concerns about its structure. Verse 8 of this poetic liturgy focuses attention on Jesus’ death as the central feature of his earthly life. No other element of his life or ministry receives mention. Granting the assertion of various interpreters that ‘even death on a cross’ is a Pauline insertion64 does not diminish the pivotal role this tradition gives to Jesus’ death. Although the original setting may have dictated this emphasis (if it was developed for use at the Eucharist or baptisms as some have thought), this liturgy still demonstrates how important this event was in the life and theology of the church that used it. We should also note that this piece associates Jesus’ death and his exaltation (v. 9) through its use of Psalm 110, the psalm quoted most often in the New Testament.65 59. This is noted by Hunter, Paul’s Predecessors, p. 32 and Wright, ‘Romans’, p. 503, n. 162. 60. J. L. Martyn (Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul, p. 141), commenting on Paul’s citation of a tradition in Gal. 2.16, identifies the theme of justification as one that was accepted by all Jewish Christians. See his discussion of evidence for this theme in the Jewish church’s tradition and how justification could be understood within the context of Judaism. Ibid., pp. 141–53. 61. Cf. L. Keck (Romans [Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2005], p. 132), who mentions this possibility. 62. E.g., U. B. Müller, Der Brief des Paulus an die Philipper (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1993), p. 90; C. Osiek, Philippians, Philemon (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2000), pp. 56–57. However, G. Fee (‘Philippians 2:5-11: Hymn or Exalted Pauline Prose?’, BBR 2 [1992], pp. 29–46, and A. Collins have recently argued that Paul is the author of this material (‘Psalms, Philippians 2:6-11, and the Origins of Christology’, BibInt 11 (2003), pp. 361–72. 63. See R. Martin, Carmen Christi: Philippians 2:5-11 in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship (rev. edn, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983). 64. So, for example, Müller, Philipper, p. 105; R. Deichgräber, Gotteshymnus und Christushymnus in der frühen Christenheit: Untersuchungen zur Form, Sprache und Stil der frühchristlichen Hymnen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1967), p. 125, who identifies this as the dominant view. However, a number of recent commentators reject this; for example, B. Thurston, ‘Philippians’, in Philippians and Philemon, SP (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005), p. 83, and M. Hooker, ‘Philippians’, NIB 11, p. 509. Both see the mention of the cross as something of a climax for the first part of the piece. 65. See the work of D. Hay on the importance of this psalm for the early church (Glory at the Right Hand: Psalm 110 in Early Christianity (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1973).

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If this passage is preformed material, it may go back to the Aramaicspeaking church. Martin notes that Lohmeyer argues on the basis of its language and style that it is the product of an author whose first language is Semitic (though he thinks it is the product of Hellenistic Christianity).66 Following this lead, Fitzmyer has produced an Aramaic version of the material.67 If it has an Aramaic Vorlage or an author with Aramaic as his first language, this liturgy probably indicates that the earliest Jerusalem church had the death of Jesus as a central focus of their understanding of Jesus. Others, however, think it was composed within Hellenistic Christianity68 and draws on pagan or Gnostic ideas. That it is an adaptation of an earlier hymn or was first composed from a Gnostic outlook are the least likely options. As Hooker comments, the idea that it has a Gnostic origin ‘has almost nothing to be said for it’.69 If those who argue that Paul composed this material for this letter are correct, then it shows us only Paul’s teaching, which he expects his church to affirm before the arrival of this letter. Perhaps it is best, with Deichgräber, to acknowledge that we know too little about the early church to identify the original Sitz im Leben of this piece.70 Its various parts seem to point to elements that we often attribute to different specific groups within the early church. Perhaps this by itself should caution us about making those distinctions too large and too firm. 4.6 Romans 8.32, 34 A number of interpreters find at least fragments of liturgical or confession material in Rom. 8.32 and 34.71 The language of paradidōmi and hyper support this identification. Dunn comments that the use of paradidōmi echoes ‘a well-established Christian theological understanding of Christ’s death’.72 Still, the extent of the quoted material is debated. Käsemann asserts that the phrase ‘handed him over for us all’ is certainly a liturgical fragment,73 but Jewett argues that Paul has added ‘for us all’ out of his concern to include Gentiles.74 Our decision about this could affect our view of the piece’s

66. Martin, Carmen Christi, pp. 27–28. 67. J. A. Fitzmyer, ‘The Aramaic Background of Philippians 2:6-11’, CBQ 50 (1988), pp. 470–83. 68. E.g. J.-F. Collange, The Epistle of Saint Paul to the Philippians (London: Epworth Press, 1979), p. 92. 69. Hooker, ‘Philippians’, p. 501. 70. Deichgräber, Gotteshymnus und Christushymnus, p. 132. 71. E.g. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, p. 129; Hengel, Early Christology, pp. 139–40; Neufeld, pp. 45–47; Hay, Glory at the Right Hand, pp. 59 and 131; Dunn, Christology, p. 35. 72. Dunn, Romans, p. 497. 73. Käsemann, Romans, p. 247. 74. Jewett, Romans, p. 538.



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provenance. A number of interpreters also find an allusion to the Akedah in v. 32,75 and v. 34 certainly alludes to Psalm 110. The short nature of the expressions Paul takes up here does not allow us to identify what part of the church produced these expressions. This passage does, however, demonstrate that believers other than Paul connected Christ’s death and exaltation while maintaining a view of his death that makes it atoning. The possible reference to the Akedah and the certain allusion to Psalm 110 point to believers who are familiar with scripture and think it is important to understand Jesus’ death through scripture. This suggests that the formulators were Jewish. This may be particularly the case if Jewett is correct about the Pauline addition of ‘for us all’. Whether Paul added it or not, Jewett may correctly discern that its intention is to include Gentiles into the sphere of those for whom Christ’s death is effective. If so, the formulation points to a time when Gentiles are being brought into the church. 4.7 Romans 5.8; 14.15; 1 Corinthians 8.11; 2 Corinthians 5.14; 1 Thessalonians 5.9-10 These texts all contain statements about Christ’s death for others. They all use a form of apethaneō (three of them the aorist third person singular) with hyper and with the subject of the verb being the name Christ. These are commonly understood as citations of a confession or to draw on formulaic language.76 These citations seem to be abbreviated versions of the same tradition Paul quotes in 1 Cor. 15.3-5. While the citation is too brief in the passages outside 1 Corinthians 15 to speculate about a provenance, their presence in three letters suggests that the formula was used widely. This is particularly the case for the Romans occurrences because this is a church in which Paul has not taught, yet he seems to expect them to recognize the allusion.77 Jewett agrees 75. E.g. Moo, Romans, p. 540, n. 18; Wright, ‘Romans’, p. 610. Jewett (Romans, p. 537), however, finds this unlikely because the evidence is insufficient to assert that the Akedah had been interpreted as an atoning event in the first century. 76. See Jewett, Romans, pp. 361–62. Others who identify the material in these passages as traditional include: for Rom. 5.8, Furnish, Jesus According to Paul, pp. 12–13; Käsemann, Romans, pp. 137–38; for 14.15, Käsemann, Romans, p. 376; for 1 Cor. 8.11, A. Eriksson, Traditions as Rhetorical Proof: Pauline Argumentation in 1 Corinthians (Stockholm: Alqvist and Wiksell, 1998), pp. 159–66; for 2 Cor. 5.14, Furnish, Jesus According to Paul, pp. 12–13, 34–35; Martin, 2 Corinthians, WBC (Waco, TX: Word, 1986), pp. 130–31 (where he ties this formulation to a baptismal liturgy); for 1 Thess. 5.9-10, E. Best, A Commentary on the First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1972), p. 218. While rejecting the idea that v. 9 draws on a baptism liturgy, A. J. Malherbe (The Letters to the Thessalonians [New York: Doubleday, 2000], pp. 298–99) acknowledges that the ‘for us’ participial phrase draws on ‘the earliest strata of Christian tradition’. 77. This consideration may be less important if Francis Watson is correct in asserting that the Roman congregation is already a Pauline church, even though Paul had not been there. See his Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective (rev. edn, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007).

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with Kertelge’s assessment that the repeated appearance of this formula shows that on this point there was ‘broad terminological and substantial agreement between Paul and pre-Pauline traditions in interpreting Jesus’ death’.78 4.8 2 Corinthians 5.21; Galatians 3.13 Interpreters often find elements of an early confession in 2 Cor. 5.2179 and Gal. 3.13,80 both passages which interpret the work of Jesus as an event that brings reconciliation with God by having Christ take up the sins of others. Though neither mentions the death of Jesus directly, it is undoubtedly in view. This is particularly clear in Galatians, where a reference to the crucifixion immediately follows. The death of Jesus is also an element of the context of 2 Corinthians 5. Betz argues that the tradition cited in Gal. 3.13 goes back to pre-Pauline Jewish Christianity. He contends that the church drew on ideas of sacrificial and meritorious death that already existed within Judaism as it tried to understand Jesus’ death. When Paul uses it in this context, Betz comments, he may be the only one that understands the vicarious death of Jesus also to mean the end of the law.81 Betz mentions 2 Cor. 5.21 in relation to this Galatians passage, noting that the sinless nature of Christ’s sacrifice made it ‘uniquely meritorious’ within the thought of Judaism.82 While this generalization about Judaism is too broad, it may well substantially capture the thought of early believers in Christ who were influenced by both the sacrificial system in Jerusalem and martyrdom traditions within Judaism. Once again, these formulas indicate that the earliest believers gave significant attention to interpreting the death of Jesus. It provided a way to understand the community’s relationship to the Torah through using Torah to interpret the event.

78. Jewett, Romans, p. 362, citing K. Kertelge, ‘Das Verständnis des Todes Jesu bei Paulus’, pp. 114–36, esp. 123–24, in J. Beutler et al. (ed.), Der Tod Jesu. Deutungen im Neuen Testament (Freiburg: Herder, 1976). 79. J. D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation (2nd edn; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), p. 121; V. P. Furnish, 2 Corinthians (New York: Doubleday, 1984), p. 340; and Martin, 2 Corinthians, pp. 156–57, assert that Paul is quoting traditional material here. Among the reasons for seeing a citation of traditional material are the use of hyper in the expression ‘for us’ and its unusual use of hamartia, which may include punishment here. 80. Dunn, Christology, p. 121 and H. D. Betz, Galatians (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1979), pp. 150–51, see traditional material in this verse. 81. Ibid., p. 151. 82. Ibid.



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4.9 Other passages A number of other passages contain what many interpreters think are fragments of formulaic traditions that refer to Jesus’ death. Some of these citations will receive brief attention here. Rom. 6.3 and 1 Cor. 6.11 both cite traditions that relate the death of Jesus to baptism.83 Paul even introduces the Romans 6 citation with a recitative hoti. These passages show that a pre-Pauline (or at least other than Paul) view of baptism understood it as a rite that incorporated the baptized into the death of Christ. Furthermore, this interpretation of baptism assumes that Jesus’ death is ‘for us’ and has a salvific effect. Romans 14.984 and 1 Thess. 4.1485 both refer to the death and resurrection of Christ to focus attention on the parousia. In the former, Paul establishes Christ’s place as judge of all; in the latter, he assures the readers that the deceased will participate in the resurrection through their association with Christ. These Pauline interpretations seem to rest on a known tradition that assigns Jesus’ death a meaning, an eschatological meaning, by associating it with his resurrection. Second Corinthians 1.7b also may contain an early tradition.86 If so, this passage indicates that the church had begun to interpret the difficulties its members endured because of their new faith as a way they were identified with the death of Jesus. This might suggest that even the thoroughly Pauline theme of suffering as a part of identification with Christ and his application of the liturgy in Philippians 2 both have significant predecessors in the tradition rather than being uniquely or originally Paul’s ideas. Finally, ‘Jesus Christ crucified’ may be a preformed encapsulation of the gospel that Paul takes up from the early church.87 If this is a pre-Pauline formula, its form may suggest that it arose as the earliest believers had to make sense of the very paradox to which this formula gives expression: a crucified messiah. At the same time as it makes this seemingly absurd claim, 83. L. Hartman (‘Into the Name of the Lord Jesus’: Baptism in the Early Church [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997], p. 71) and D. Hellholm (‘The Impact of the Situational Contexts for Paul’s Use of Baptismal Traditions in His Letters’, in Aune, Seland and Ulrichsen (eds), Neotestamentica et Philonica, pp. 147–75 (here 155–59), find a tradition in these passages. 1 Cor. 6.11 is one of the passages Martyn cites as evidence that Jewish Christianity developed the theme of justification before Paul took it up. Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul, p. 143. 84. Schmithals, Theology, p. 54, identifies tradition in this verse and Neufeld, Early Christian Confessions, p. 62, thinks it may contain such material. 85. Best, Thessalonians, pp. 186–87; F. F. Bruce, 1 and 2 Thessalonians (Waco, TX: Word, 1982), p. 97. Malherbe, Thessalonians, p. 265, acknowledges that it contains ‘traditional Christian language’ but rejects the view that it quotes a credal formula. 86. So Ellis, ‘Preformed Traditions’, p. 309. 87. Furnish finds Paul’s use of the phrase in 1 Cor. 2.2 and Gal. 3.1 to be uses of a tradition. Jesus According to Paul, p. 24. Betz calls ‘Jesus Christ crucified’ an ‘abbreviated form of the “kerygma”’ and notes the parallels in 1 Cor. 1.23 and 2.2. Other passages he seems to think make use of this tradition include: 1 Cor. 1.13, 17, 18; 2.8; 2 Cor. 13.4; Gal. 5.11, 24; 6.12, 14, 17; Phil. 2.8; 3.18. Galatians, p. 132, n. 40.

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it identifies that messiah as Jesus. Believers would have formulated this statement in a context where other interpretations of Jesus’ death were more common.88 Thus, if it is a previously formed proclamation, it may take us to the earliest times after Jesus’ death as those who experienced the resurrection brought the paradox of their faith to expression. 4.10 Summary Our examination of allusions to traditions Paul cites in his letters offers no evidence that there were branches of the church (or even of people favourably disposed to Jesus but outside the church) that did not give a central place to interpreting the death of Jesus as they defined their new identity. On the contrary, they indicate that the church developed clear lines of interpretation of Jesus’ death in its earliest days. Paul’s citation in 1 Cor. 15.3-5 shows that the Jerusalem church made Jesus’ death a prominent feature of its message and saw that death as expiatory. These assertions seem to have emerged in the face of alternative interpretations of that death and in conjunction with the claim that Jesus was the Messiah. It also indicates that these ideas were developed through the church’s interpretation of scripture. If Paul is being honest about his reception of this tradition, then it was formulated within the first five, perhaps two, years of the church’s existence. The traditions Paul cites in 1 Corinthians 11 and Romans 3 provide clear evidence that interpreting the death of Jesus was of central importance in the pre-Pauline church. The Passover meal tradition has Jesus interpret his own death as vicarious and as a covenant sacrifice. Without considering whether Jesus actually did this, the early tradition attributes this meaning to his death. The importance of Jesus’ death and this interpretation can be seen in that the church focuses one of its primary rituals on those meanings of Jesus’ death. If Paul’s form of this tradition derives from Syria/Damascus, it shows that the church there already sees Jesus’ death as a covenant sacrifice and as vicarious. And since the church probably formed this tradition on the basis of an earlier telling of the passion story that assumes a similar interpretation, it probably indicates that both Syria and Jerusalem give Jesus’ death these meanings. Paul’s citations of baptismal traditions that view that initiatory rite as a participation in Jesus’ death also suggest that the pre-Pauline church saw Jesus’ death as the foundation of the believer’s relationship with God and the means of life in the eschatological present and future. Wherever the specific traditions we have examined originated, discussion of the meaning of baptism, particularly how it was different from John the Baptist’s and other ritual washings, had to begin in the earliest days after the experience of the resurrection. The traditions we have seen tie that difference to Christian baptism’s relationship to the death of Jesus. Paul’s further assumption in 88. E. Käsemann describes a ‘theology of the cross’ as a necessarily polemical formulation. Perspectives on Paul, Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1969, p. 35.



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Roman 6 that receiving baptism entails reception of the Spirit, signals a connection between Jesus’ death and the blessings of the new age. When the tradition in Romans 3 interprets Jesus’ death as a hilasterion, it clearly points to Jewish believers because of the way this term is used in the LXX for the lid of the ark. Whether from Palestine or Syria, it comes from a community in which temple imagery is meaningful. Further, if part of the tradition’s function is to explain the admission of Gentiles (though this remains less secure), then it was probably formulated within months of their entering the church. That would imply that this image and formulation made their way into the church within two or three years of its founding. Even the liturgical material of Philippians 2 provides evidence of the pivotal role of Jesus’ death in the thought of the early church. In a recitation of the exalted place of Jesus before the incarnation and after his resurrection, the only part of his ministry that receives mention is his death. The allusions to Isaiah 53 in the tradition Paul cites in Romans 4 confirms what we saw in 1 Corinthians 15: that at least some who made Jesus’ death a central element of their interpretation of him also were among those who gave extended attention to understanding him through scripture. Indeed, scripture (at least as remembered by the disciples) may have been one of the most important resources for the earliest church as it came to terms with the death of Jesus. We have seen that some traditions Paul cites about Jesus’ death as a sacrifice (particularly as a covenant-initiating sacrifice) fit well within Jewish thought of the time. The hypothesis that the church had to move out of Palestine or beyond Jewish thought to Hellenistic thought before such understandings of Jesus’ death were possible finds no support in the evidence we have found. Just the opposite, the church’s interpretations of Jesus’ death grow out of ideas associated with the temple and Passover. The possibility that such ideas were enabled by martyrdom theologies seems likely. And even though there is no Palestinian evidence for the interpretations of martyrs’ deaths in 4 Maccabees, it seems unlikely that those ideas had no currency in the Palestine of Roman occupation. If ‘Jesus Christ crucified’ is a formulation that Paul adopts, such a shorthand of the kerygma assumes that this event is a focal point of the church’s message. If the inclusion of the name Jesus suggests that this formulation developed in Palestine, it provides further evidence of the importance they give that form of death in their interpretation of Jesus. But if Paul formulated this expression, it shows only what his churches know as the core of his preaching. It may be important to observe that many of Paul’s citations of traditions about Jesus’ death appear in Romans. Here he is writing to a church he did not found and which he has never visited. His citations may serve to ground the content of his message to a church that has less reason to trust him than his own churches have.89 If the members of this church do recognize 89. Even if, as Watson proposes, we should consider the Roman church a Pauline church, they still may need assurances about his grounding in the tradition they received from his emissaries.

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these allusions and citations, which Paul’s use of them assumes, they are evidence that this emphasis on, and these interpretations of, Jesus’ death are widespread, if not universal, within the church. If they are not so widespread or well known, Paul thinks they are and so thinks he stands well within the church’s tradition on this matter. 5. Conclusion Neither Paul’s responses to those with whom he disagrees nor his citations of traditions that involve Jesus’ death suggest that he is encountering believers who give less place to Jesus’ death than he does. Indeed, they suggest that there existed a broad agreement about the centrality of and the vicarious and salvific effect of Jesus’ death. It seems to be Paul’s expectation that all who identify themselves with the church agree about this matter, at least in these general ways. His arguments in Galatians presume that both the teachers he opposes and the letter’s recipients think it is plausible that Paul remains in substantial theological agreement with the leaders of the Jerusalem church on these issues. Even though he mentions ‘another gospel’, there is no suggestion that what makes it ‘other’ is a diminution of the importance of Jesus’ death or an alternative interpretation of it. What Paul reveals about the anti-Pauline movements to which he responds give no indication that the members of those movements fail to give Jesus’ death a salvific meaning. Paul nowhere gives any indication that he knows of people favourably disposed to Jesus, his life or his teachings, who do not give his death a fundamental and salvific role in their understanding of him. If such movements existed, Paul never acknowledges their existence in his extant letters. When present-day scholars envision communities that form their identity in relation to Jesus but do not give extended attention to the meaning of his death by crucifixion, they fail to grasp the effects such a death has on a community. Alan Kirk argues from social memory studies that violence brings such social disruption that communities must institute commemorative activities to retain social identity.90 Furthermore, he argues, violence ‘poses a particularly difficult challenge to the hermeneutical impulse’ because it ‘generates a sense of fragmentation, of the disintegration of a moral and social order previously experienced as stable and routine.’91 This would particularly be the case if the acknowledged leaders of your own religion initiated the violence that was carried out by the overlord who claimed to sustain peace and order. As Kirk says:

90. A. Kirk, ‘The Memory of Violence and the Death of Jesus in Q’, pp. 191–206, esp. 191, in A. Kirk and T. Thatcher (eds), Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2005). 91. Ibid., p. 193.



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The death of Jesus, through political violence, would bring about the sort of radically altered situation, dissolution of previous group frameworks, and discontinuity from all that had gone before such that if the community were to survive it would need to reconstitute its memory, and with the same stroke the coherence of its own social and moral identity, in the context of intense commemorative activities.92

All who remained favourably disposed toward Jesus to such an extent that they preserved his teaching or viewed him as a messenger from God would have had to give this kind of attention to the dramatic form of his death. Beyond the internal necessity of interpreting Jesus’ death, anyone who would continue to value his life and/or teaching to such an extent that they formed their group identity around them had to develop responses to outsiders who interpreted the death of Jesus by giving crucifixion one of its usual meanings. We have noted above that the Jerusalem church would have had to reject explicitly those meanings (e.g., that Jesus was a criminal or a false messiah) and provide alternative meanings. Any kind of adherence to Jesus after his crucifixion would have entailed the same demand.93 Such a death demands an apology to outsiders. Our examination of those Paul opposes and of the traditions about the death of Jesus that he cites gives no indications that any wing of the church that Paul interacts with questioned the importance of Jesus’ death in the formulation of their identity. Neither do we see evidence that he knows of people who try to follow Jesus’ teachings or are favourably disposed toward any aspect of his life or ministry that do not give prominence to Jesus’ death as a salvific event. Perhaps some reticence to acknowledge how important discussion and explanation of Jesus’ death was in formation of the identity of anyone who held a favourable view of Jesus stems from our culture’s limitations on the meaning of dying for others. Outside biblical materials there is a significant body of material that demonstrates that the Graeco-Roman world possessed various ways to interpret a person’s death so that the person became a martyr for some cause or institution (one’s city, a philosophy, etc.).94 For example, adherents to Socrates’ teaching had to interpret his death in a way that allowed them to continue following his philosophy after his death as 92. Ibid., p. 206. Notably, Kirk argues that the Q community gave extensive attention to interpreting and commemorating Jesus’ death. 93. The books in the Nag Hammadi library demonstrate that even docetic Gnostics had to give Jesus’ death a meaning and assign it a significance – even if that was radically different from what we have seen in the evidence of Paul’s letters. It seems more likely that they came to give it the meanings we find there in response to the meanings we have seen evidence for in the earlier time than that the Gnostic meaning developed immediately following Jesus’ death. This is particularly the case since Gnosticism was probably not a developed system in the first century. 94. See J. B. Gibson, ‘Paul’s “Dying Formula” Prolegomena to an Understanding of Its Import and Significance’, pp 20–41, in S. E. McGinn (ed.), Celebrating Romans: Template for Pauline Theology – Essays in Honor of Robert Jewett (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004); D. Seeley, The Noble Death: Graeco-Roman Martyrology and Paul’s Concept of Salvation (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990).

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a criminal. Such a death could not simply be ignored. Some (e.g., Epictetus Disc. 4.1.168-69) who interpreted Socrates’ death (and the deaths of other philosophers, warriors, and others) saw it as vicarious, though not expiatory. The point here is simply that such deaths could not be ignored and were often seen as vicarious without any implication that they were expiatory. There was so much attention to such deaths that Seneca could say they are ‘droned to death in all the schools’ (Ep. 24.6).95 If we recognize that the ancient definition of vicarious was broader than expiation, we open ourselves to more historically credible reconstructions of what sense various kinds of communities who formed their identify in relation to Jesus made of his violent death as a political criminal. We can be certain, however, that no Jesusaffirming community could ignore it. We have not discussed all of Paul’s uses of pre-existing formulations of the faith. Yet even the limitation of examining solely his statements about Jesus’ death highlights his dependence on teaching about Jesus that existed before he joined the church. His surprisingly numerous citations of earlier tradition indicate that he expected his churches to recognize these statements as allusions to the tradition that defines the identity of the church. Moreover, these citations suggest that he belongs within the mainstream of the firstcentury church in much that he teaches. Such extensive dependence discredits any claim that Paul was the founder of Christianity or the one who invented the Christ-cult idea or the idea that Jesus’ death was vicarious. The various reasons we have seen for tracing some of the traditions to the Palestinian church also suggest that it was not even the ‘Hellenistic church’96 that made the vicarious nature of Christ’s death central in the formulation of the church’s teaching and identity. Rather, such interpretations of Jesus’ death emerge in the earliest moments of the church’s existence that we can see. Thus, asserting theologically affirmative interpretations of Jesus’ death, interpretations that did not permit it to count against his mission or message, was a central defining characteristic of the identity of all groups who identified themselves with Jesus.

95. See Seeley, The Noble Death, pp. 124–29. He cites this Epictetus passage and other writers who speak of vicarious deaths. 96. The standard category ‘Hellenistic church’ now seems problematic because we recognize that the division between Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism has been exaggerated. It seems equally unwise to make too big of a distinction between the church in Jerusalem and that in Antioch in the 30s ce.

Chapter 10

Baths, Baptism, and Patronage: The Continuing Role Roman Social Identity in Corinth1

of

J. Brian Tucker Richard DeMaris in The New Testament in its Ritual World argues that in Corinth baptism may be understood as a ritual subversion of Roman hegemony by a small group that continued to identify with Corinth’s Greek past. Eduard Stommel, in 1959, suggested that Roman bathing practices, especially those related to nudity and anointing the body with oil, were integral in the development of some local Christ-movement baptismal practices. This chapter takes his argument, which has recently been furthered by Bryan Spinks, as its point of departure.2 Stommel suggests that pouring 1. For Bill, a gracious and wise doctoral supervisor, whose shared interest in Paul and Christ-movement identity has enriched my life and scholarship. I am a better husband, father, teacher, and scholar because of our time together and your investment in me. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2009 SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. 2. E. Stommel, ‘Christliche Taufriten und antike Badesitten’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 2 (1959), pp. 5–15, esp. 6–8; See also B. D. Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals and Theologies of Baptism: From the New Testament to the Council of Trent – Liturgy, Worship and Society (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 35–37; G. G. Fagan, Bathing in Public in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 10. One interesting example of the relatedness of baptism and bathing is evident in the Syriac version of the third-century work, The Acts of Judas Thomas 26–27, which describes the baptism of King Gundaphorus and his brother Gad by Thomas: And they begged of him [Judas Thomas] that they might receive the sign [of baptism] … And the king gave orders that the bath should be closed for seven days, on the eighth day the three of them entered into the bath by night that Judas might baptize them. And many lamps were lighted in the bath. And when they had entered into the bath-house, Judas went in before them … And Judas went up and stood upon the edge of the cistern, and poured oil upon their heads … And he baptized them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit of holiness. And when they had come up out of the water, a youth appeared to them, and he was holding a lighted taper; and the light of the lamps became pale through its light. Concerning the Pre-Nicene period, Spinks notes the presence of ritual torches and differing ritual patterns, some of which included anointing with oil (Greek version of The

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(i.e. affusion, Latin affusio) in a manner quite similar to the Roman baths, with their emphasis on cleansing, was followed by some within the early Christ-movement.3 Ferguson acknowledges that ‘the practices of nudity and anointing of the body with oil in Christian baptism possibly had as one factor in their development ancient bathing customs’ but argues that this does not provide the complete answer.4 Though I will resist ‘immersing myself’ into the ‘mode’ of baptism debate, I would suggest that an additional component of Roman bathing practices, the patronage connections, may have impacted the practice of early Christmovement baptism. Zajac concludes that ‘baths belonged within the ancient system of’ patronage and that ‘the name of the benefactor might become synonymous with these massive [bathing] environments’.5 Martial laments the fact that there was an expectation that the client would attend the bath of his patron.6 Fagan concludes: ‘Martial liked to go to the Thermae of Titus. The demands placed on him by the duties of clientele, however, forced him on occasion to frequent the Thermae of Agrippa, the preferred facility of one of his patrons.’7 This chapter argues that baptism is an example of the way Roman social identity continued to influence life within the e0kklhsi/a / in Corinth.8 Specifically, Acts of Thomas), others only with water (Didache), and still others used both oil and water in the rite (s.v.). Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, p. 21; E. C. Whitaker, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), pp. 16–17. The differences in ritual performance may be traced to varied etiquette in ancient bathing customs. For example, Pliny, Letters, 9.36.3: ‘I oil myself, I take exercise, I have my bath’. Cf. Pliny, Natural History, 15.5; Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 1.23; F. Yegül, Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992), pp. 38, 354–55, concludes anointing with oil was an essential component of exercise and bathing but that it could come before or after the bath. 3. Stommel, ‘Christliche Taufriten’, p. 8; E. Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 34–36, 858–60, is not so convinced. 4. Ferguson, Baptism, p. 36, doubts if the mode of baptism came from these bathing practices but thinks instead that ‘Jewish ritual washings, mediated and transformed by John the Baptist’ offer a better solution for the source of the mode of baptism. Further connections could include: an acknowledgement of the uniqueness of the messianic anointing but the anointing for protection and healing is a spiritualized form of secular bathing practices. Also, the anointing by deacons and deaconesses is similar to the role that servants played in bathing. The white clothes that were worn are cognizant with the clean clothes worn after a bath and the Eucharist meal may have been the counterpart to the eating (and inviting of others) a meal after bathing. Cf. Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, p. 36. 5. N. Zajac, ‘The Thermae: A Policy of Public Health or Personal Legitimation’, in J. DeLaine and D. E. Johnston (eds), Roman Baths and Bathing (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology Sup 37, 1999), pp. 99–105, esp. 103, 105. 6. Martial, Epigrams, 3.36.5; see J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 29. 7. Fagan, Bathing in Public, p. 20, n. 24; Martial, Epigrams, 3.36.5-6. 8. This is a part of the argument of my recently completed thesis. J. B. Tucker, ‘You Belong to Christ’: Paul and the Formation of Social Identity in 1 Corinthians 1–4, PhD thesis (University of Wales, Lampeter, 2009; published Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010).



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the patronage connections implicit in Roman bathing practices were imposed on the relationship between the baptisand and the officiant of the identityforming rite. This approach does invert DeMaris’ thesis; however, it does not exclude the possibility that a small indigenous group within the e0kklhsi/a saw in baptism a way to critique Roman imperial ideology. Stommel’s contention that Roman bathing practices influenced early Christ-movement baptismal practices provides precedent for arguing that the hierarchical, status-oriented ideology associated with Roman bathing practices could have contributed to the divisions within an e0kklhsi/a also influenced by other aspects of Roman social identity. The chapter will build upon William S. Campbell’s approach to identity formation, which informs my understanding of Christ-movement social identity. Second, it will survey places in 1 Corinthians that evidence problems related to Roman social identity. Third, it will address the way baptism was being understood in the context of Roman bathing practices. Finally, the findings of these three sections will be applied to 1 Cor. 1.13-17. 1. Paul’s Approach to Social Identity Formation William S. Campbell, in his 2006 monograph Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity, interacts with the concept of universalistic Christmovement identity, concludes that this concept is not sufficiently nuanced and argues that particularistic identity is more reflective of the realities of the early Christ-movement.9 The key to understanding Campbell’s approach is ‘the retention of one’s particularity in Christ, whether Jew or gentile’.10 He sees Paul as an individual who was not looking to eradicate ethnic distinctions or encourage Gentiles to become Jews. His strategy and mission, however, required ‘a transformation in the symbolic universe of these peoples in the light of the Christ-event’.11 From this perspective Campbell develops a model of identity transformation that slightly nuances the traditional model of new creation.12 He builds his case from 1 Cor. 7.17, 20: ‘Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches … each one should remain in the condition in which he was called’.13 So, despite the reprioritization of all things ‘in Christ’, ‘the situation (the point of receipt of call – klh=siv) in which one received the call to faith has a specific significance in Paul’s ethics’.14 Thus, in 9. W. S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity (London: T&T Clark, 2006 [pb. 2008]), p. 156. 10. Campbell, Christian Identity, p. 156. 11. Campbell, Christian Identity, p. 8. 12. W. S. Campbell, ‘Covenant and New Covenant’, G. F. Hawthorne, R. P. Martin and D. G. Reid (eds), Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), pp. 179–83. 13. Campbell, Christian Identity, p. 91. 14. Campbell, Christian Identity, p. 91.

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Corinth, previous Roman social identities may continue to be relevant within the Christ-movement. 1 Corinthians 12.13 with its probable association with baptism15 may provide insight into the way confusion could arise about the continuing role of previous social identities within the Christ-movement, especially if something similar to this was said during the baptismal rite. (This also coheres closely to DeMaris’ idealized ritual versus lived-out ritual.)16 Paul writes: ‘In one Spirit (pneu/mati) we were all baptized (e0bapti/sqhmen) into one body (sw~ma), whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free.’ Following Campbell’s approach, this verse indicates that a transformed identity does not remove one’s previous identity. Ethnic and social identities are extraneous salvifically but continue to be important ‘in Christ’ in a reprioritized manner (1 Cor. 7.24). Paul’s identity-shaping rhetoric, we will see below, may actually contribute to a reinscribing of Roman social identity with regard to the household and hierarchy. 2. The Problem of Roman Social Identity in Corinth 1 Corinthians provides evidence for considerable contact with those outside the Christ-movement; however, that contact lacks evidence of significant conflict. This interaction offered opportunities for extending the Pauline mission; however, it also created a number of the problems within the e0kklhsi/a. Paul ultimately presents this contact as helpful but provides halakhic guidelines for the way these relationships should proceed (1 Cor. 9.19-23). In 1 Cor. 4.8-13, Paul describes the experience of the Christ-followers in Corinth as lacking many of the difficulties that Paul and others within the Christ-movement had experienced. In Corinth, a person’s wealth and status were highly valued.17 This was similar to other cities in the Roman east; however, local variations of Roman social identity may have brought this ethos to the fore in Corinth (1 Cor. 4.8; 2 Cor. 8.14).18 Some of the Corinthian Christ-followers were also confident in the court system. In 1 Cor. 6.1-11, Paul argues that they were putting too much assurance in this human institution, which Saunders notes was also ‘an extension of the imperial powers [and] the Imperial Cult’.19 The courts were not accessible to the majority of individuals 15. Dunn argues it is a metaphor; J. D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 331, 450–52, 456. 16. R. DeMaris, The New Testament in its Ritual World (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 30–31. 17. C. K. Williams II, ‘Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center’, in T. E. Gregory (ed.), The Corinthia in the Roman Period (Ann Arbor: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1994), pp. 31–46, esp. 33. 18. A. C. Thiselton, ‘The Significance of Recent Research on 1 Corinthians for Hermeneutical Appropriation of this Epistle Today’, Neot 40 (2), (2006), pp. 320–52, esp. 324–25. 19. R. Saunders, ‘Paul and the Imperial Cult’, in S. E. Porter (ed.), Paul and His Opponents (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 227–38, esp. 234.



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in the Roman Empire so the fact that they were engaged in litigious activity suggests that at least some within the e0kklhsi/a possessed significant financial resources.20 Their good social relations are also evident in their willingness to participate in the cultic meals in the various temples in Corinth (1 Cor. 8.7-13). The civic identity of the colony was indistinguishable from its religious identity. This may be the reason that many of the Corinthians did not see a problem with continuing the practices mentioned in 1 Corinthians 8. To extend the previous argument, note that the Christ-followers in Corinth also dined with outsiders in their homes and in other communal settings (1 Cor. 10.27–11.1). If they were not involved in the civic life of the community, one would not expect this to be a significant issue. Further, they did not sense the need to change their approach to their civic life once they had accepted the gospel. Paul also notes that outsiders were visiting the houses, workshops, apartments, or lecture halls that were being used for community gatherings (1 Cor. 14.1-25).21 This high degree of social integration within the community of Christ-followers did support the broader Pauline mission, but it also contributed to some of the difficulties that are evident in 1 Corinthians with regard to their Roman social identity.22 3. Baptism, Bathing, and Political Patronage As mentioned earlier, DeMaris argues that, in Corinth, baptism may be understood as a ritual subversion of Roman hegemony by a small group that 20. Cf. S. J. Friesen, ‘Poverty in Pauline Studies’, JSNT 26 (3) (2004), pp. 323–61; R. N. Longenecker, ‘Exposing the Economic Middle: A Revised Economy Scale for the Study of Early Urban Christianity’, JSNT 31 (3) (2009), pp. 243–78. 21. P. Oakes, Reading Romans in Pompeii: Paul’s Letter at Ground Level (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), pp. 89–97; R. W. Gehring, House Church and Mission: The Importance of Household Structures in Early Christianity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004), pp. 149–50; R. Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), pp. 64–65; D. Horrell critiques Murphy-O’Connor’s conception of house-churches meeting in a Roman villa, and Horrell, for his part suggests the possibility of meeting in one of the upper rooms ‘on the East Theater Street’, ‘Domestic Space and Christian Meetings at Corinth: Imagining New Contexts and the Buildings East of the Theatre’, NTS 50 (2004), pp. 349–69, esp. 368; Adams suggests the use of ‘houseful’ rather than household as an emerging way to understand the meetings of the early Christmovement. A ‘houseful’ is ‘a group unconnected in family terms except by co-residence’, ‘First-Century Models for Paul’s Churches’, in T. D. Still and D. G. Horrell (eds), After the First Urban Christians: The Social-Scientific Study of Pauline Christianity Twenty-Five Years Later (London: T&T Clark, 2009), pp. 60–78, esp. 68. 22. Cf. Thessalonica, where such openness was not evident; Cf. J. M. G. Barclay, ‘Conflict in Thessalonica’, CBQ 55 (1993), pp. 512–30; J. P. Dickson, Mission-Commitment in Ancient Judaism and in the Pauline Communities: The Shape, Extent and Background of Early Christian Mission (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp. 228–61; J. C. Walters, ‘Civic Identity in Roman Corinth and its Impact on the Early Christians’, D. N. Schowalter and S. J. Friesen (eds), Urban Religion in Roman Corinth: Interdisciplinary Approaches (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp. 397–417.

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continued to identify with Corinth’s Greek past. While this is plausible, this chapter addresses weaknesses in DeMaris’ argument.23 Based on my general approach to Paul and Christ-movement identity formation,24 which includes the use of Tajfel and Turner’s Social Identity Theory, I would suggest rather that some within the e0kklhsi/a were treating baptism in a manner consonant with other Roman water practices that functioned as status-oriented ordering principles. So, my argument is that control/use of baptism among the Corinthian e0kklhsi/a reflects an assertion of Roman hegemonic control rather than a subversion of it, based on a misunderstanding of the social implications of the gospel received from Paul.25 In other words, I would suggest that the Roman colonists within the e0kklhsi/a were preoccupied with water use. This is a slight inversion of DeMaris’ approach, but it could also be seen as ‘the other side of the coin’ with regard to some of the social divisions within the e0kklhsi/a.26 The significance of the Roman colonists in the life of Corinth comes from the Argive petition, also known as Pseudo-Julian, Letters 198, which Spawforth has convincingly argued should be dated to the mid-first century ce.27 This letter presents Corinth as a thoroughly Roman colony in the first century. For example, the anonymous letter writer from Argos presents Corinth as a ‘foreign … country’ in comparison to its Greek neighbours (409b). Furthermore, Corinth is described as having rejected ‘the laws and customs of ancient Greece’ and replaced them with the laws ‘from the sovereign city [Rome]’ (409c). Moreover, Corinth is said to have received great ‘advantages since they received the colony from Rome’ (409d). The Corinthian expression of Romanitas may have extended to ‘hunting shows’ in ‘their theatres’ and the imposition of taxes in order to ‘purchase the pleasure of indulging their temperaments’ (409a).28 This does not rule out the influence of indigenous Greek culture but it does reinforce the idea of the pervasive Roman nature of the colony. 23. DeMaris, Ritual World, p. 50. 24. J. B. Tucker, ‘The Role of Civic Identity on the Pauline Mission in Corinth’, Didaskalia: The Journal of Providence College and Seminary 19 (2008), pp. 72–91; ‘Christian Identity – Created or Construed?’, JBV 30 (2009), pp. 71–77; You Belong to Christ, pp. 51–56; J. C. Turner (ed.), Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987); H. Tajfel (ed.), Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (London: Academic Press, 1978), pp. 61–76. 25. That is, the way the Corinthian Christ-followers’ previous social identities continue ‘in Christ’. 26. Baths were not subversive because the social theatre associated with the baths reinforced the power of Rome and the inability of an indigenous population to realize their desire to throw off Roman hegemony. Cf. Zajac, ‘The Thermae’, p. 105. 27. A. J. S. Spawforth, ‘Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult: Pseudo-Julian, Letters 198’, Hesperia 63 (2) (1994), pp. 211–32, esp. 212–16; J. Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archaeology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), p. 96; B. W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 5. 28. Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth, p. 98.



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3.1. Bathing in the Roman urban setting Bathing was a significant social and political event within the Roman urban setting. It was not just for personal hygiene or refreshment after a workout in the palaestra ‘exercise yard’ but, as noted by Tacitus, it was a central part of the Roman pace of life.29 Numerous and varied social activities were also associated with the Roman bath, e.g. political deal-making.30 Roman bathing practices were deeply embedded in the local variations of the Roman cultural ethos and thus were a central discursive practice in the formation of Roman social identity (as baptism was in the formation of ‘in Christ’ identity). Yegül thinks that, as the toga was laid aside, so some of their rigid social hierarchies were likewise relativized within the confines of the Roman bath as Roman males experienced ‘the cozy warmth of the baths and their classless world of nudity [which] encouraged friendships and intimacy’.31 However, this overlooks the fact that during the early empire the baths were primarily occupied by wealthy, adult males, and, as Revell suggests, they actually reinforced culturally established hierarchical structures.32 Roman bathing practices were a key component in the formation and maintenance of Roman social identity. A detailed picture of the Roman baths in mid-first-century Corinth is quite difficult; however, we can discern some general contours of the way status was displayed by means of the bath. The decision to attend one bath over another was an implicit means of social stratification. We do not have enough evidence with regard to mid-first-century Corinth, but there may have been separate baths for men and women. Nielsen argues that restrictions on mixed bathing were central to the formation of gender-based social identities.33 If the bath had one set of bathing rooms, these restrictions would have consisted of different times for women (most likely early in the morning) and men (in the sixth through ninth hours).34 If the bath only had one set of bathing rooms, then it may have contributed to a temporal segregation based on gender. Baths also reinforced status and rank differences between those who were free and those who were not. Slaves and criminals, Pliny notes, were used to maintain and clean the baths.35 They were kept in the area of the furnace and 29. Tacitus, Agricola, 21.2; Vitruvius, On Architecture, 5.10; see also DeMaris, Ritual World, p. 37. 30. L. Revell, Roman Imperialism and Local Identities (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 172; J. Wiseman, ‘The Gymnasium Area at Corinth, 1969–1970’, Hesperia 41 (1) (1972), pp. 1–42, esp. 39. 31. Yegül, Baths and Bathing, pp. 2, 5; see also Pliny, Letters, 3.14.6-8 and Cicero, For Marcus Caelius, 61-67. 32. Revell, Roman Imperialism, p. 173; DeMaris discusses the way rites reinforce social hierarchies. DeMaris, Ritual World, p. 29. 33. I. Nielsen, Thermae et Balnea: The Architectural and Cultural History of Roman Baths (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1990), p. 135; Revell, Roman Imperialism, p. 177. 34. R. Laurence, Roman Pompeii: Space and Society (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 161. 35. Pliny, Letters, 10.32.2.

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not in view of those attending the bath. This reinforced their marginalized status. Some attendants would be evident; however, their servile status was reinforced by their function within the bathing area.36 Bathing was a way for Roman social identities to be reinforced; in this the earlier statement by Yegül requires a reassessment. Elite male hierarchies were maintained while female and slave identities were marginalized through temporal and spatial structures.37 Patronage in relation to Roman baths could take two forms. First, a wealthy and powerful individual could provide the funds necessary for the building of a public bath. This person would then be honoured by a statue, inscription, or dedicatory plaque in which the individual could be referred to as a patronus. This civic declaration was a way for a community to thank their wealthy benefactor and resulted in increased honour and political power for the patron. An inscription from Galatia reads ‘the council and people of Ankyra honoured Menelaos, son of Metrotimos, a crowned magistrate and secretary, who was gymnasiarch and gave oil to the people from large vessels and offered baths at his own expense’.38 Another inscription from Isthmos, Cos, undated, reads, ‘Polla Lampia, of Cos, set up the statue of Aphrodite for the Augustan Bath and for the people of Isthmos at her own expense’.39 Second, as previously described in the Martial reference, an individual could enter into a patronage relationship with another individual or a private group.40 Here, services and goods could be exchanged in this asymmetrical relationship. 3.2. Corinthian baths in the mid-first century One of the possible difficulties with DeMaris’ approach is that he overstates the nature and number of Roman baths in mid-first-century Corinth. Crouch identifies five Greek baths during the Hellenistic period, most of which are in close proximity with the nine Roman baths identified by Jane Biers, baths that

36. Revell, Roman Imperialism, p. 178. 37. Therefore, DeMaris’ suggestion that baptism was a rite causing social crises might need to be reframed in order to note the different experiences with these socially defined water practices. Furthermore, he may overstate the dissonance created by conversion to the Christ-movement. DeMaris, Ritual World, p. 27. 38. Fagan notes, ‘Menelaos, a local magistrate, provided bathing out of his own pocket. He also gave oil to the people’, Bathing in Public, p. 344; IGRR 4.555. 39. Fagan explains that ‘This inscription is on the base of a statue of Aphrodite. The text assumes that the “people of Isthmos” would be using the baths, so they could see the status’, Bathing in Public, pp. 334–35, esp. 335. Cf. this with the statue found in the Fountain of the Lamps, which is discussed below. 40. C. Osiek, M. Y. MacDonald and J. H. Tulloch, A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), p. 198.



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span the period from ‘the 1st century to the late 6th or early 7th century’.41 Biers notes that during this period ‘Corinth possessed at least one Imperialtype bath, as well as small neighbourhood ones’.42 The baths north of the Peribolos of Apollo, the so-called ‘baths of Eurykles’, which are located near the Forum, are the only ones that may be somewhat confidently dated to the mid-first century (i.e. first phase) or more plausibly after the earthquake in ‘June ad 77’ (i.e. second phase).43 The other baths have not been excavated sufficiently nor dated securely enough and thus are not particularly helpful in determining the level of interpenetration of Greek and Roman ideas with regard to bathing practices in the mid-first century, nor their trajectories in the second century ce. For example, the baths west of ‘The Fountain of the Lamps’ are most likely second century.44 The baths south of Temple E are possibly first century and could be relevant to the present discussion but this conclusion is quite uncertain.45 The baths close to the Hadji Mustafa fountain may also be first century but no pools have been found, and it is possible that this building may not even be a bath.46 The Roman bath at Isthmia, Wohl contends, was ‘built probably in the 2nd century after Christ’, a point also noted by DeMaris.47 Another possible line of evidence for Roman baths in Corinth in the first century ce. comes from Wiseman and his discussion of ‘The Fountain of The

41. D. P. Crouch, Water Management in Ancient Greek Cities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 85; Biers notes that there could be two others, making the total 11, J. Biers, ‘Lavari est Vivere: Baths in Roman Corinth’, in C. K. Williams II and N. Bookidis (eds), Corinth, The Centenary 1896–1996 (Athens: ASCSA, 2003), pp. 304–05. 42. Biers, ‘Lavari est Vivere’, pp. 303–19, esp. 317. Yegül describes the balneae as ‘smaller bathing establishments’, Baths and Bathing, p. 3. 43. An inhabitant of Roman Corinth in the mid-first century would have entered by climbing ‘a flight of three steps’ from the Lechaion Road ‘to the colonnade of the bath’ and then followed the normal bathing sequence; C. K. Williams II, J. MacIntosh and J. E. Fisher, ‘Excavation at Corinth, 1973’, Hesperia 43 (1) (January–March 1974): pp. 1–76, esp. 25, 33; Cf. Yegül, Baths and Bathing, p. 3. Williams notes ‘that the walls of the bath in its first period were of well cut rectangular poros blocks, generally between 0.58 and 0.60 m. thick’. Furthermore, the layout consisted ‘of a series of rectangular rooms along the west and north sides of an open court’. The actual plunge was rectangular in shape and ‘8.35 m. north-south by 4.68 m. east-west on the east-west axis of the court. It was about 1.25 m. deep. The plunge was tiled in diamond-shaped terracotta tiles, laid in star pattern’; C. K. Williams II, ‘Excavations at Corinth, 1968’, Hesperia 38 (1) (January–March 1969), pp. 36–63, esp. 63. Hayward has recently argued that rather than ‘poros blocks’ the walls were made of ‘oolitic limestone’; C. L. Hayward, ‘Geology of Corinth: The Study of a Basic Resource’, in C. K. Williams II and N. Bookidis (eds), Corinth, The Centenary 1896–1996 (Athens: ASCSA, 2003), pp. 15–42, esp. 32, 41. 44. Biers, ‘Lavari est Vivere’, p. 308 (i.e. at Barouxitika); G. Daux, ‘Chronique des fouilles en 1958’, BCH 79 (1959), pp. 102–20, 603–06 (esp. 604, fig. 1 and fig. 2). 45. R. A. Tomlinson, ‘Archaeology in Greece 1995–96’, Archaeological Reports 42 (1995–96), pp. 1–47, esp. 11. 46. Biers, ‘Lavari est Vivere’, pp. 307–08. 47. B. L. Wohl, ‘A Deposit of Lamps from the Roman Bath at Isthmia’, Hesperia 50 (1981), pp. 112–40, esp. 116; DeMaris, Ritual World, p. 46.

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Lamps’, which Fotopoulos, following Wiseman, identifies as the Fountain of Lerna.48 This Greek bath was renovated during the Early Roman period, and DeMaris uses it as evidence for ‘continuity with the [Greek] past’ in Roman Corinth.49 However, it lacks the basic structure of the ‘traditional Roman’ bath and thus Biers does not include it in her survey.50 The lack of Roman bathing structures may be related to the existing topographical features related to the subterranean bath. So, DeMaris may overstate the continuity of the bath in Corinth with its Greek past. Wiseman notes that ‘The construction date seems to be in the first century after Christ, not only on the basis of associated finds, but also of architectural style … such work is seldom seen in Greece after the reign of Tiberius.’51 The bath associated with ‘The Fountain of the Lamps’ appears to have been reopened during the mid-first century ce and possibly during the reign of Tiberius.52 The head of a ‘marble portrait statue’ of a ‘member of the Julio-Claudian family’ was found, and Wiseman suggests that it may be that of a ‘young Augustus’.53 This further brings to the fore the Roman nature of this bathing facility and somewhat lessens DeMaris’ contention that ‘The Fountain of the Lamps’ may be a piece of evidence that certain water and bathing practices were functioning as a subversion of Roman imperialism and hegemonic control.54 The statue, as the one mentioned above at Isthmos, argues for the normal political patronage context for the bath. Wiseman inventories a ‘dedicatory plaque’ that was found at ‘The Fountain of the Lamps’.55 He considers possible names for the honoree but concludes that it could refer to a library connected with the gymnasium/bath complex.56 If Wiseman’s suggestion that it refers to a library (Bib[liotheca]) is accepted then it may serve as a secondary support for the general contention that trips to the bath were part of the formation of Roman social identity. If it is a normal ‘dedicatory plaque’ referring to a cognomen beginning with ‘Bib’ then it may 48. Wiseman, ‘The Gymnasium’, pp. 9–26; Wiseman, ‘Corinth and Rome I: 228 B.C. – A.D. 267’, ANRW 7.1 (1979), pp. 438–548, esp. 512; cf. J. Fotopoulos, Food Offered to Idols in Roman Corinth: A Social-Rhetorical Reconsideration of 1 Corinthians 8:1–11:1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp. 56, 59; C. Roebuck, The Asklepieion and Lerna (Princeton, NJ: ASCSA, 1959), pp. 1–4, 85–110. 49. DeMaris, Ritual World, p. 46. 50. Biers, ‘Lavari est Vivere’, p. 305, n. 7. 51. Wiseman explains that ‘Part of the upper east wall of the bath corridor is constructed of poros [oolitic limestone] opus reticulatum (Fig. 7)’. As for some of the finds, see the Italian-made early first-century Roman terracotta lamps, which should be compared with the Herakles lamp. Wiseman, ‘The Gymnasium’, p. 19; p. 20, n. 11; all on plate 6. 52. Wiseman, ‘The Gymnasium’, p. 19. 53. Wiseman, ‘The Gymnasium’, p. 20. Later, Wiseman notes that ‘Statues of athletes or dignitaries doubtless stood in the courtyard and in rooms and niches along its perimeter’, ‘The Gymnasium’, p. 21. 54. DeMaris, Ritual World, p. 53. 55. Wiseman, ‘The Gymnasium’, pp. 38–39. The inscription reads: BIB[---] AD[---] NA[---] RE[P?--]. 56. Wiseman, ‘The Gymnasium’, p. 39.



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be taken as evidence for a plaque honouring the sponsor/patron of the bath, similar to the above-mentioned inscription from Galatia.57 I would suggest that the problem in Corinth was not a group of indigenous Corinthians continuing Greek water practices but rather an over-association with current Roman water practices, specifically the patronal context of the bathing experience. The Roman bath complex that we know was active in the mid-first century contains evidence of the importance of patronage as a statusoriented ordering principle as does the possible inscription just mentioned from ‘The Fountain of the Lamps’. Another inscription, this one from the baths north of the Peribolos of Apollo reads: ‘[Quintus] Granius Bassus, son of Quintus, [procurator of Augustus] and his companion (comes), praefect of constructions [---] concerning the bath [---]’.58 This inscription dates to the first part of the mid-first century ce. Kent thinks that it is difficult to determine the relationship of Bassus to the bath but that ‘it would seem probable that he contributed to the construction of some part of it’.59 The ‘revetment slab’60 would have been placed as a reminder for all those who used the bath that Bassus was key in providing it and should be honoured. Thus, I would suggest that we consider the interconnected nature of patronage and the Roman baths as a possible ritual-cultural influence in the life of the e0kklhsi/a with regard to baptism. 4. Reprioritization of Roman Social Identity in 1 Corinthians 1.13-17 I would argue then that the person who baptized an individual or a household was being interpreted as a patron in a manner similar to the way a dedicatory plaque served as a reminder of the importance and honour of the sponsor of the bath. The iterative component of Roman bathing practices61 may have been taken over by an ongoing identification with the patron/officiant of the baptism.62 In 1.13, Paul writes: ‘Has Christ been divided (meme/ristai)?’ Each 57. A. B. West, Latin Inscriptions, 1896–1926 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), p. 80. 58. J. H. Kent, The Inscriptions, 1926–1950 (Princeton, NJ: ASCSA, 1966), p. 61, n. 131. 59. Kent, The Inscriptions, p. 61. 60. Kent, The Inscriptions, p. 61. 61. Which was not present in baptism, though DeMaris does point out that this may not have been universally so. He notes that Hebrews 6.2 with its ‘mention of instruction about baptisms – not the typical Greek term for baptism … raises the possibility that some circles in the early church practiced multiple baptisms or recognized several types’, Ritual World, p. 17. Cf. Acts 18.25; 19.3; John the Baptist’s baptism, not to mention the baptism for the dead in 1 Cor. 15.29. 62. DeMaris notes that ‘Paul implies that the conflicting loyalties that threaten group unity stem in part from who baptized whom’. Also, ‘Paul’s forgetfulness … betrays’ his ‘uneasiness about his involvement in baptism and his unhappiness that the rite has contributed to divisiveness among the Corinthian house churches and within them’, Ritual World, p. 16. A. Clarke explains that ‘Paul points out his thankfulness that few can look

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sub-group from 1.12 may have been claiming its own portion of Christ, an idea that is completely inappropriate for a community that belongs to Christ (1 Cor. 3.23). Paul then asks two more rhetorical questions: ‘was Paul crucified (e0staurw/ qh) on your behalf?’ and ‘or were you baptized (e0bapti/sqhte) into the name of Paul?’ The community-defining message of the cross and the identity-forming experience of baptism are employed by Paul as evidence that there is a fundamental misunderstanding concerning the social implications of gospel, especially as it relates to the Christ-followers’ identification with group leaders or prototypes. The community misunderstood the identity-defining significance of baptism. In 1.14-15, Paul is thankful that his involvement with baptisms within the community was minimal. He begins, ‘I am thankful that I did not baptize (e0ba&ptisa) any of you’63 because that would have inadvertently contributed to the division within the community. He then remembers that he baptized Crispus, as well as Gaius, a Roman who evidently was able to have ‘the whole assembly’ within his house (Rom. 16.23).64 He was thankful for this because ‘someone (tiv) could not say (ei1ph|), that they were baptized (e0ba&ptisa) into my [Paul’s] name’. Paul’s choice of baptisands may have contributed to the association of baptism with patronal relationships and water practices; especially if Crispus, Gaius and Stephanas were individuals of some means, their awareness of to him as their figure-head through his baptizing of them, 1 Cor. 1.14-16. It is actions such as these which were being interpreted in the Christian community as indicative of patronal relationships’, Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006), p. 92. My research seeks to build on Clarke’s approach by providing further archaeological evidence to support the patronal connections and by drawing on the resources of social identity theory in order to nuance some of his findings, see Tucker, You Belong to Christ, pp. 20–22. Marshall and Chow argue more specifically that the difficulties in the e0kklhsi/a were related to ‘patronal friendship’ sourced in the refusal to receive the financial gift offered to Paul (P. Marshall, Enmity in Corinth Social Conventions in Paul’s Relations with the Corinthians [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987], pp. 177–79), and thus the conflict was actually between ‘the powerful patrons in the church’ who had aligned themselves against Paul (J. K. Chow, Patronage and Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992], p. 100). Recently an urban patronage model in Corinth was put forth by Peter Oakes in ‘Urban Structure and Patronage: Christ Followers in Corinth’, in D. Neufeld and R. E. DeMaris (eds), Understanding the Social World of the New Testament (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 178–93. His model, however, does not consider the role of water practices and urban patronage. 63. Some mss. include tw|~ Qew|~ see E. J. Schnabel, Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther (Wuppertal: R. Brockhaus, 2006), p. 85. 64. But see Jewett, Romans, pp. 980–81. I did consider the possibility that since some Roman villas would have had a private bath, this was also one way in which baptism could have occurred early on. Gehring notes that ‘most houses did not have a built-in facility for baptism. Some Palestinian houses containing miqva’ot may have been the exception to the rule. Perhaps this is the reason that in the NT we hear relatively often of the baptism of a house but never a baptism in a house’, House Church and Mission, p. 290; cf. W. Caraher, L. J. Hall and R. S. Moore (eds), Archaeology and History in Roman, Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece: Studies on Method and Meaning in Honor of Timothy E. Gregory (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 169–70.



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these associations would have been quite acute.65 Thus, the divisions that were occurring do not require theological issues or opponents but could simply have arisen from the normal social categorization processes. Baptism is meant to define social identity in relation to Christ and not in relation to the person who performed the baptism.66 The baptism mentioned in 1.16 references another component of Roman social identity. Paul recalls, ‘Now I also baptized (e0ba/ptisa) the household (oi]kon) of Stephanas’ and then brings the matter to a close by saying ‘I do not remember, beyond these, if I baptized (e0ba/ptisa) any others’. The previous two verses mentioned individuals; however, ‘the household of Stephanas’ was baptized, not just Stephanas. This allows for a plausible scenario in which social identity,67 intra-group behaviour, and group belonging could become issues.68 If Stephanas and his household identified with Paul and others did not, then one could conceive that the person involved in the baptism became for that household a group prototype.69 Paul appears to take advantage of this process in 1 Cor. 16.16 where he writes that ‘the congregation should “fit into” the order provided by the “first converts of the household of 65. Garland suggests the issue is between Crispus and Gaius, whom he connects with ethnic issues. However, it is equally likely that all three are involved in the difficulties associated with various groups that were meeting in their homes. These may be Garland’s ‘smaller subgroups that met in other house churches (Rom. 16.5; 1 Cor. 16.19; Col. 4.15; Philem. 2)’; D. E. Garland, 1 Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), pp. 54–55. 66. Witherington thinks that ‘it is interesting to speculate about the possibility that once Apollos received correct teaching about Christian baptism, he emphasized this when he went to Corinth. If so, then perhaps those who say, “I am of Apollos” (1 Cor. 1.12, 14-17) are those who received water baptism from Apollos. Is Paul distinguishing himself from Apollos in his baptizing and eloquent wisdom in 1 Corinthians 1.17? Perhaps’; B. Witherington, Troubled Waters: The Real New Testament Theology of Baptism (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), p. 70. 67. Tajfel defines social identity as ‘that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his [sic] knowledge of his [sic] membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership’. This also serves as my stipulated definition of social identity. H. Tajfel, ‘Social Categorization, Social Identity and Social Comparison’, in H. Tajfel (ed.), Differentiation between Social Groups, p. 63. 68. Social Identity Theory provides insight into the inner workings of the group, its ‘intragroup behaviour’. Here the focus is on what is required to maintain group stability and identity. Group unity is sustained by addressing issues related primarily to ‘self-categorization in terms of a relevant category’ and only secondarily to ‘interpersonal attraction’. Issues related to belonging are central to group problems. M. A. Hogg and D. Abrams, Social Identifications: A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), pp. 4, 105–06; Tucker, You Belong to Christ, pp. 75–76. 69. Here Paul would be taking advantage of what Hogg and Abrams refer to as the process of ‘self-definition’ occurring within ‘the defining characteristics of the group prototype’; Hogg and Abrams, Social Identifications, p. 21. Cf. The concept of an ‘exemplar’ in P. F. Esler and R. A. Piper, Lazarus, Mary and Martha: Social-Scientific Approaches to the Gospel of John (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2006), p. 33.

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Stephanas”’.70 Moreover, this shows the way Paul understands Roman social identity to continue to be relevant within the Christ-movement. Thus, I see more continuity between Paul’s use of kinship discourse and household structures than does DeMaris. This again would suggest the possibility that baptism did not cause social crises in an equal manner within the Christmovement.71 This problem would have been acute in the Roman Empire in that the oi]kov/familia ‘household’, with its reliance on kinship discourse, provided a key ordering principle for defining social identity. So, when Paul identifies ‘the household of Stephanas’, he is addressing a central component of Roman social structure. Here oi]kov refers to those who are under the authority and influence of Stephanas. It is plausible that one of the difficulties within the Pauline community was a misunderstanding of the continued role of the oi]kov/familia within the e0kklhsi/a.72 Had its significance been obliterated, transformed, or reprioritized ‘in Christ’? The centrality of the oi]kov/familia within the civic life and the boundary crossing event of baptism combine to produce a ‘contact zone’ of identity formation, especially when one considers that women and slaves, those marginalized by normal Roman bathing practices, were part of the Roman household.73 In 1.17, Paul summarizes his argument concerning the Corinthians’ lack of understanding of their ‘in Christ’ social identity. For Paul, ‘Christ as the wisdom and power of God’ is to be the primary identity-forming discourse. He continues: ‘Christ did not send (a0pe/steile/n) me to baptize (bapti/zein) but to preach the gospel (eu0aggeli/zesqai)’. It could be that Paul is alluding to his responsibility with regard to the confusion over the social function 70. K. Ehrensperger, Paul and the Dynamics of Power (New York: T&T Clark, 2007 [pb. 2009]), p. 173. 71. DeMaris calls into question the idea that baptism was a rite of initiation or a rite of passage and rather suggests that it should be understood as a boundary-crossing event with a primary focus on ritual and crisis rather than the ‘derivative status’ that focuses on ‘faith, sacred symbol, and sacred story’ to ‘inform or dictate what ritual is about’; DeMaris, Ritual World, pp. 20, 22. This is also a critique of D. Horrell, The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), p. 80. Kinship and family issues are an important component of this debate, and DeMaris brings up important issues related to the continuation of these discourses within the Christ-movement; DeMaris, Ritual World, pp. 25–27. I would suggest that they continue except in those places where they conflict with Christ’s lordship. The passages that DeMaris references (e.g. Lk. 14.26; Mk 10.29-30) can be seen as comparative rather than contrastive in their rhetorical function. 72. Cf. J. Økland, Women in their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space (London: T&T Clark, 2004), pp. 131–67; J. B. Tucker, ‘Contested Ritual Space in Corinth: Engendering Solidarity and Difference’ (paper presented at SBL Midwest Annual Meeting, Bourbonnais, IL, 2007). 73. E. Adams, Constructing the World: A Study in Paul’s Cosmological Language (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), p. 90; M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 7; J. A. Marchal, The Politics of Heaven: Women, Gender, and Empire in the Study of Paul (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), pp. 92–95.



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of baptism and trying to distance himself from what he understands has become a problem within the community. Since baptism has become the focus of social presentation74 and communal behaviour, Paul asserts social influence75 to remind them that his primary purpose is to ‘preach the gospel’ not ‘to baptize’. He is not disparaging baptism in a manner similar to Seneca disparaging Roman bathing practices,76 but pointing out that it has the potential to define social identity, as evidenced by the sub-group social identifications in 1.12. Paul argues that anything that obscures ‘the cross of Christ’ within the community must be de-emphasized, and this includes the elevation of certain aspects of their Roman social identity. The significance of the reading of 1 Cor. 1.13-17 presented here includes the following. First, it brings to the fore the continuing role of Roman social identity and points out ways that the archaeological record may inform both ritual and social scientific approaches to the text. Second, it extends the initial observations by Clarke, Chow, Marshall, and Oakes concerning the role of patronage within the e0kklhsi/a in Corinth by providing concrete examples of the way this ordering principle of Roman social identity continued to function within the Christ-movement. Third, by outlining key aspects of Social Identity Theory evident in the text, it provides a way to understand the negotiation of social identity positions between Paul and his addressees. Paul sought to form the social identity of the Christ-followers in Corinth; however, he was only one among the many discursive agents responsible for the emergence of local expressions of Christ-movement social identity.77

74. Social presence is concerned with the processes of self-presentation that lead to behaviour changes based on the influence of others within a social setting. From a conceptual point of view, the process may be described as a ‘negotiation’ that relies on the cognitive frameworks of ‘group identification’ and ‘self-categorization’. Hogg and Abrams, Social Identifications, pp. 128–34; Tucker, You Belong to Christ, p. 76. 75. The concept of ‘social influence’, which is the way in which ‘people affect each others’ opinions and behaviours’, results in ‘conformity to group norms’. Hogg and Abrams, Social Identifications, pp. 5, 158–60, 173–74, 185. 76. Fagan notes that ‘In numerous passages, the mid-first century A. D. philosopher L. Annaeus Seneca voices his abhorrence of the contemporary bathing culture and, in doing so, provides many useful insights into the practice’, Bathing in Public, p. 52, n. 40. In Seneca, Dialogues, we read, for example, in: ‘7.7.3 (pleasure lurks in the baths), 10.12.7 (pampered people at the baths); Letters, 56.1-2 (dreadful noises emanating from a bath), 86.4-13 and 90.25 (deplorable growth in bath luxury; see 122.8), 108.16 (baths emaciate the body), 122.6 (excessive drinking at the baths)’. Jerome’s famous line was ‘He who has bathed in Christ has no need of a second bath.’ Yegül, Baths and Bathing, pp. 314–19; Jerome, Letters, 14.10. 77. J. B. Tucker, ‘Did Paul Create Christian Identity?’ (paper presented at SBL Midwest Annual Meeting, Valparaiso, IN, 2010). This paper addresses various discursive agents that formed Christ-movement identity and suggests that Paul may have been a marginal figure, who struggled to form the identity of his assemblies.

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Richard DeMaris has provided an excellent resource for using ritual studies in a sophisticated manner in NT interpretation. His close reading of the text and the material record serves as an example for other exegetes to follow. While his overall thesis with regard to water practices is quite helpful, this chapter has suggested that, rather than primarily seeing a small group of indigenous Greeks using baptism as a subversion of Roman imperial ideology, we might consider the slightly more likely idea that the social implications of this water practice (i.e. baptism) were open to confusion with regard to the relationship between the baptisand and the officiator of the rite. Thus, Roman water practices and the associated patronage structures were causing confusion over the way prototypical figures were to function within the e0kklhsi/a.

Chapter 11

Paul’s Use

Temple Imagery in the Corinthian Correspondence: The Creation of Christian Identity of

Kar Yong Lim 1. Living under the Shadow of the Temples The city of Roman Corinth in the days of Paul was a centre of cultic worship graphically attested to by its many magnificent and imposing temples, statues and shrines dedicated to both Greek and Roman gods such as Apollo, Athena, Tyche, Aphrodite, Pantheon, Demeter, Kore, Dionysus, Neptune, Asklepios, Venus, Octavia and Poseidon. Pausanias referred to at least 24 sanctuaries and temples found in Corinth in his Description of Greece.1 In addition, there were also temples dedicated to the Roman imperial cult and the Egyptian cults of Isis and Sarapis. Such juxtaposition not only clearly defined the varieties of deities that are well represented but also the extent to which religion penetrated every sector of life in Corinth. The strong religious attitudes of Corinth were reflected in coins, terracotta and marble statues, mosaic flooring and other daily household wares.2 When travellers arrived in Corinth from 1. See Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book II on Corinth. For further discussion, see D. Engels, Roman Corinth: An Alternative Model for the Classical City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 92–120; J. R. Lanci, A New Temple for Corinth: Rhetorical and Archaeological Approaches to Pauline Imagery (New York: Peter Lang, 1997), pp. 25–43, 89–113, N. Bookidis, ‘The Sanctuaries of Corinth’, in Ch. K. Williams II and N. Bookidis (eds), Corinth, The Centenary 1896–1996, Vol. 20 (Athens: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2003), pp. 247–59; D. N. Schowalter and S. J. Friesen (eds), Urban Religion in Roman Corinth: Interdisciplinary Approaches (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), in particular the article by N. Bookidis, ‘Religion in Corinth: 146 B. C. E. to 100 C. E.’, pp. 141–64, P. Coutsoumpos, Paul and the Lord`s Supper: A Socio-historical Investigation (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 171–80; and P. Coutsoumpos, ‘Paul, the Cults in Corinth and the Corinthian Correspondence’, in S. E. Porter (ed.), Paul’s World, Pauline Studies 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 171–80. On textual and archaeological evidence on social, political and religious activities in Corinth, consult J. Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archaeology, 3rd edn (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002). 2. For images of some of these statues now housed in the Corinth Museum at ancient Corinth, see N. Papahatzis, Ancient Corinth: The Museums of Corinth, Isthmia and Sicyon (Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 1977), pp. 88–97.

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the port of Cenchreae or leave the city to head west to Sicyon, they would be greeted by the temples of Aphrodite and Isis and the temple of Apollo, respectively. As such, the Corinthians literally lived continually in the presence of the gods with the smell of fragrant offerings wafting out of the temples. Paul is keenly aware of this, having stayed there for more than a year when he lived under the shadows of the temples (cf. Acts 18.11). Much of life in Corinth centred on the temples and their associated activities. Apart from being places of worship, temples were also centres for social activities, providing platform for expanding one’s social network. As such, encounters or participation in activities within the temples and shrines in Corinth were almost unavoidable for the Christ-believers. As noted by Garland: ‘If Christians took part in civic life, they would have been expected to participate in festivals which included sacrificial meals in some form or another.’3 This is evident from Paul’s extensive discussion related to pagan cultic practice in canonical letters to the Corinthians.4 In 1 Corinthians 8–10, Paul deals with the issue of consuming food sacrificed to idols both in the temple precincts (1 Cor. 8.7-11; 10.14-17) and in private homes (1 Cor. 10.27-30). Since meat sold in the meat market or macellum had already been sacrificed to idols, consuming such meat is almost unavoidable (1 Cor. 10.25).5 Paul may have also dealt with some of the Christ-believers participating in temple prostitution in 1 Cor. 6.12-20.6 In addition, Paul’s reference to the body imagery in 1 Cor. 12.12-26 is most likely drawn from the prevailing practices of offering terracotta replicas of the parts of the body healed by Asklepios in the temple.7 From his correspondence with the Corinthians, it is evident that many of the issues that Paul has to deal with in the Christ-community arise not because the Christ-community exists in the pagan world but because too many of the 3. D. E. Garland, 1 Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2003), p. 347. 4. Apart from addressing and appealing to the Graeco-Roman cultic practices, Paul also alludes to Jewish cultic imagery as reflected in 1 Cor. 5.6-8; 9.1-14; 10.14-22, amongst others. See K. Y. Lim, ‘The Sufferings of Christ Are Abundant in Us’: A Narrative Dynamics Investigation of Paul’s Sufferings in 2 Corinthians (London: T&T Clark, 2009), pp. 64–96, for further treatment on the use of cultic imagery in 2 Cor. 2.14-16. 5. See Murphy O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth, pp. 186–91; W. L. Willis, Idol Meat in Corinth: The Pauline Argument in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985), pp. 13–15; Coutsoumpos, Paul and the Lord`s Supper, pp. 9–37. For further treatment on the issue of food sacrificed to idols, see F. Y. Yong, Freedom & Consideration: The Christian’s Dilemma Concerning Food Offered to Idols (Petaling Jaya: Pustaka Sufes, 1994); D. Newton, Deity and Diet: The Dilemma of Sacrificial Food at Corinth (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998); A. T. Cheung, Idol Food in Corinth: Jewish Background and Pauline Legacy (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); B. W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 269–301; and J. Fotopoulos, Food Offered to Idols in Roman Corinth: A Social-rhetorical Reconsideration of 1 Corinthians 8:1–11:1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). 6. See B. S. Rosner, ‘Temple Prostitution in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20’, NovT 40 (1998), pp. 336–51. 7. See A. E. Hill, ‘The Source of Asclepius: An Alternative Source for Paul’s Body Theology?’ JBL 99 (1980), pp. 437–39; Murphy O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth, pp. 186–91.



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pagan values and practices from their former religious beliefs are still being carried over and practised in this new-found community in Christ.8 As rightly argued by Winter, these problems arose partly because the Christ-believers, as citizens of Roman Corinth, ‘had grown up in, and imbibed that culture’, and they reacted to some of these issues ‘on the basis of the learnt conventions and cultural mores of Corinthian Romanitas’.9 If the Corinthians are so rooted in the Graeco-Roman convention and cultural norms, how would Paul shape the social identity and values of the Christ-believers so that they are aligned to the message of the gospel of Christ that is proclaimed to them (cf. 1 Cor. 1.17–2.5), and become transformed in their symbolic universe as a result of their new status in Christ? If Paul were concerned about establishing an alternative assembly in Corinth,10 how would he address his audience? 2. Paul’s Use of Imagery One intriguing approach adopted by Paul in realigning his audience to the truth of the gospel is to use forceful imagery in his communication.11 After having spent an extended period of time in Corinth (cf. Acts 18.1), Paul is not only familiar with the wider culture of Corinth but is capable of using relevant images in drawing insights from the symbolic universe of his audience to address them. In this chapter, I will be examining temple imagery used by Paul in the Corinthian correspondence in light of the formation of Christian identity.12 If one were to live in such an environment where temple worship and rituals are closely associated with one’s symbolic universe, culture, and existence, and where its activities are clear demonstration of one’s social network and participation in the communal life, how would one, who used to be a part 8. See Winter, After Paul Left Corinth, pp. 27–28. 9. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth, p. 27. See also J. B. Tucker, ‘‘You belong to Christ’: Paul and the Formation of Social Identity in 1 Corinthians 1–4’ (PhD thesis, University of Wales, Lampeter, 2009; published Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010), p. 15, who suggests that the Corinthians were continuing to identify primarily with key aspects of their Roman social identity rather than their identity ‘in Christ’. As a result, this confusion over identity positions contributed to the problems within the community. 10. For the argument that Paul seeks to realign the identity hierarchy of the Corinthians that is grounded in the Graeco-Roman convention to one that is rooted in Christ, see Tucker, ‘You belong to Christ’. Cf. R. A. Horsley, ‘Paul’s Assembly in Corinth: An Alternative Society’, in Schowalter and Friesen (eds), Urban Religion in Roman Corinth, pp. 369–95. 11. See R. F. Collins, The Power of Images in Paul (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008). 12. In a forthcoming publication, I will be examining in greater depth Paul’s use of images in the Corinthian correspondence in relation to the creation of Christian identity. I will argue that Paul’s use of images is not only a calculated but also a deliberate attempt in persuading the Christ-believers to remember the founding stories of the Christ-movement, adhere to certain behavioural patterns and ethical norms, and observe certain cults and rituals in the formation of Christian identity.

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of this social and cultural background but is now a member of the Christcommunity, have reacted and responded when the following words were heard: Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. (1 Cor. 3.16-17) Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? (1 Cor. 6.19) What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. (2 Cor. 6.16)

Would temple imagery recall their understanding of their previous cultic activities and participation in one of the many temple festivals? Would such a use of temple imagery cause them to pause and reflect on their current status in Christ? What function does temple imagery that once represented the powerful expression of one’s former symbolic universe and existence play in the identity formation of this fledging community of Christ-believers? How would the use of temple imagery create the maximum impact desired by Paul in communicating the truth of the gospel? 3. Study of Paul’s Use of Imagery The study of Paul’s use of images in his letters has gained significant attention in recent years since Herbert M. Gale’s 1964 publication.13 Most of these recent studies focused on Paul’s use of a particular imagery, either in one of his letters or throughout the Pauline corpus, as reflected in the recent works of Aasgaard, Berge, Burke, Byron, Finlan, Hogeterp, Kim, Lanci, and Tsang, amongst others.14 David J. Williams’ Paul’s Metaphors: Their Context and 13. H. M. Gale, The Use of Analogy in the Letters of Paul (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1964). 14. Recent studies on Paul’s use of imagery, amongst others, include: R. Aasgaard, ‘My Beloved Brothers and Sisters!’: Christian Siblingship in Paul (London: T&T Clark, 2004); T. J. Burke, Family Matters: A Socio-Historical Study of Kinship Metaphors in 1 Thessalonians (London: T&T Clark, 2003); M. K. Berge, The Language of Belonging: A Rhetorical Analysis of Kinship Language in First Corinthians (Leuven: Peeters, 2004); T. J. Burke, Adopted into God’s Family: Exploring A Pauline Metaphor (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006); J. Byron, Slavery Metaphors in Early Judaism and Pauline Christianity: A Traditio-Historical and Exegetical Examination (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003); S. Finlan, The Background and Content of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2004); A. L. A. Hogeterp, Paul and God’s Temple: A Historical Interpretation of Cultic Imagery in the Corinthian Correspondence (Leuven: Peeters, 2006); J. H. Kim, The Significance of Clothing Imagery in the Pauline Corpus (London: T&T Clark, 2004); J. R. Lanci, A New Temple for Corinth: Rhetorical and Archaeological Approaches to Pauline Imagery (New York: Peter Lang, 1997); and S. Tsang, From Slaves to Sons: A New Rhetoric Analysis on Paul’s Slave Metaphors in his Letters to the Galatians (New York: Peter Lang, 2005).



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Character, with its reference-type format approach, remains one of the most comprehensive studies of the subject matter, and provides extensive information on the socio-historical background drawn from both the Jewish and Graeco-Roman sources in illuminating Paul’s diverse use of metaphors.15 However, Williams’ treatment follows a thematic outline of Paul’s use of metaphors. Such thematic treatment suffers from a major setback in that how these metaphors function within a particular letter of Paul is insufficiently addressed or downplayed. It is not until the recent publication by Collins that serious attempts to trace Paul’s use of metaphors within his individual letters are pursued.16 In his work, Collins investigates how Paul uses metaphors in each of the seven undisputable letters with the purpose of persuading his audience concerning the truth of the gospel. While there has been progress seen in the study of Paul’s use of images, what remains to be explored is how Paul’s use of diverse metaphors within a particular letter functions in the formation of Christian identity in relation to cults and rituals; ethical teachings and behavioural patterns; and group dynamics and boundaries with outsiders as collective expression of shaping their formative identity in Christ. It is hoped this chapter will be able to address some of these concerns. 4. Paul’s Use of Temple Imagery in the Corinthian Correspondence In both the Corinthian letters, Paul uses the word, na/ o v, usually translated as ‘temple’, a total of six times: in 1 Cor. 3.16; 3.17 (twice); 6.19; and 2 Cor. 6.16 (twice). Commentators have frequently emphasized that Paul chooses na/ o v over i9ero/n and highlighted the semantic differences between these two, with the former denoting the dwelling place of deities and the latter a reference to the entire temple precinct.17 Support for this argument is often drawn from the usage of these words in the Gospels where na/ o v is used to refer to the Holy of Holies and i9ero/n to the entire temple precinct. Further argument is made that this distinction is also maintained in the LXX. The problem with such a view is that it presumes a very neatly and tightly defined meaning for both na/ o v and i9ero/ n.18 However, this may not always be the case. This can be seen in Mt. 27.5, where Judas throws the 30 pieces of silver into the na/ o v, which certainly refers to the temple precinct and not to the 15. D. J. Williams, Paul’s Metaphors: Their Context and Character (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999). 16. Collins, The Power of Images in Paul. 17. For example, see A. Robertson and A. Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians (2nd edn, ICC, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1929), p. 66; G. D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), p. 146; A. C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), p. 315. 18. This has been pointed out by Lanci, New Temple, pp. 91–93. Cf. J. R. Levison, ‘The Spirit and the Temple in Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians’, in S. E. Porter (ed.), Paul and His Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2006), p. 191, n. 5.

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Holy of Holies, to which he had no access.19 Hence, whether Paul narrowly has in mind the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem Temple when he uses the word na/ o v in the Corinthian correspondence is difficult to sustain.20 On the other hand, na/ o v could also refer to one of the numerous Graeco-Roman temples or shrines found scattered around the city of Corinth. As such, it is best not to assume that when Paul speaks of the community as na/ o v, the sole referent could only be the Jerusalem Temple. The first temple imagery appears in 1 Cor. 3.16-17 where Paul declares: ‘Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.’ The stern warning against destroying God’s temple comes in the midst of a larger rhetorical unit of 1 Corinthians 1–4 where Paul deals with the issue of dissensions within the community over the nature of leadership as reported to him by Chloe’s household (1 Cor. 1.10-12).21 In this context, the Christ-believers are metaphorically referred to as God’s temple indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Significantly, this temple imagery is used not to address individual or sub-groups, but the entire community as underscored by the use of plural nouns and verbal forms. Moving on to 1 Cor. 6.19, Paul once again employs temple imagery: ‘Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?’ In this context, Paul deals with the issue of sexual immorality. By declaring that the Christcommunity is the temple of the Holy Spirit, Paul once again emphasizes that their behaviour should reflect that of their new status in Christ and be consistent with the presence of God indwelling within them.22 19. Cf. O. Michael, TDNT IV, p. 884. Note also that in Jos Ag. Ap. 2.119 and B. J. 5.207, na/o v and i9ero/n are used interchangeably. See also the use of na/o v in John 2.20 that most likely refers to the entire temple precinct rather that the Holy of Holies. 20. As noted in Fee, First Corinthians, p. 146, n. 6. However, Fee maintains the distinction in semantic differences in his argument. 21. The problem of divisions within the Corinthian community is primarily rooted in the manner in which leaders are evaluated based on the prevailing Graeco-Roman conventions. See A. D. Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth: A Socio-Historical and Exegetical Study of 1 Corinthians 1–6 (2nd edn; Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2006); T. B. Savage, Power through Weakness: Paul’s Understanding of the Christian Ministry in 2 Corinthians (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Winter, After Paul Left Corinth, pp. 31–43. See also V. H. T. Nguyen, Christian Identity in Corinth: A Comparative Study of 2 Corinthians, Epictetus and Valerius Maximus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) and Lim, Sufferings of Christ are Abundant in Us, p. 198. 22. Fee, First Corinthians, p. 264, argues that Paul applies temple imagery to individual believers and not the entire community. So J. A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 269–70. However, this argument may not be that strong if the entire context is taken into consideration. While Paul may have some of the individuals in mind in 1 Cor. 6.12-20, his ultimate concern is the entire community. See R. Kempthorne, ‘Incest and the Body of Christ: A Study on 1 Corinthians VI. 12-20’, NTS 14 (1978/79), pp. 568–74; M. Newton, The Concept of Purity at Qumran and in the Letters of Paul (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 56–57; D. R. de Lacey,



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Temple imagery appears for the third time in 2 Cor. 6.16: ‘What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God.’ This imagery appears in one of the most debated controversial periscopes in the Corinthian correspondence where its authenticity and integrity have been questioned.23 In addition, this periscope is surrounded by a host of interpretive issues.24 As a result, the use of temple imagery has been somewhat marginalized in the interpretation of this pericope. Whether 2 Cor. 6.14–7.1 is a later interpolation or not does not minimize the forceful impact of temple imagery within this self-contained pericope where Paul exhorts the Corinthians to live up to their status as the temple of God by drawing clear social boundaries for their relationship with those outside the community. 5. Christ-Community as Temple Replacement? It seems that one of the primary motivations for claiming the semantic distinction in the usage of na/ o v and i9ero/n as highlighted earlier is to advance the understanding of temple-replacement theology. This is seen in Bertil Gärtner’s work, where he argues that the reason na/ o v is chosen over i9ero/n is because Paul has in mind that the Shekinah presence of God no longer rests on the Jerusalem Temple but is now transferred to the church, which constitutes the true Temple.25 Similarly, Michael Newton, by comparing the notion of purity in the Qumran and Pauline communities, argues that Paul’s use of the idea of purity centres upon the view that ‘the believers constitute the Temple of God and as such enjoy the presence of God in their midst’.26 In light of this, those who enter this community must observe the standards of purity, distinguishing between the sacred and the profane, the pure and the impure. Like Gärtner, Newton also insists that Paul’s choice of na/ o v instead of i9ero/n is significant in support for the temple-replacement theology.27 oi[tinev e1ste u9mei/v: The Function of a Metaphor in St Paul’, in W. Horbury (ed.), Templum Amicitiae: Essays on the Second Temple Presented to Ernst Bammel (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), pp. 401–09; M. M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), p. 119. 23. For a survey of scholarship on the integrity and authenticity of 2 Cor. 6.14–7.1, see M. E. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Vol. 1 (ICC, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), pp. 3–49, and J. A. Adewuya, Holiness and Community in 2 Cor 6:14–7:1: Paul’s View of Communal Holiness in the Corinthian Correspondence (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), pp. 13–43. For bibliography, see Lim, The Sufferings of Christ are Abundant in Us, pp. 28–29. 24. See Thrall, Second Epistle, Vol. I, pp. 25–36. For further discussion, see M. J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), pp. 14–25; V. P. Furnish, II Corinthians (New York: Doubleday, 1984), pp. 375–83. 25. B. Gärtner, The Temple and the Community in Qumran and the New Testament (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1965). 26. Newton, The Concept of Purity, p. 52. See also his discussion, pp. 10–51. 27. Newton, The Concept of Purity, pp. 53–59.

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In his work, The New Temple: The Church in the New Testment, R. J. McKelvey adopts a biblical theology approach and begins his study by examining the significance of the temple in the Old Testament, Jewish and Greek literature.28 For McKelvey, the eschatological non-literal, spiritual temple ‘made without hands has displaced the temple made with hands’29 where ‘the temple of Jerusalem surrendered its redemptive significance to Christ and his church and thereby dropped out of the plan of God’.30 This temple-replacement theology takes on its full development in texts like 1 Cor. 3.16-17; 6.19; 2 Cor. 6.16–7.1; Eph. 2.20-22; 2 Cor. 5.1-5; 1 Pet. 4.17; 1 Tim. 3.15 and numerous texts in Revelation, amongst others.31 In his massive work on the biblical theology of the temple, Greg Beale traces the development of the notion of temple from both the Old and New Testaments.32 Beale demonstrates that the Old Testament never called for a new temple to be built. In fact, Beale argues that the ‘the Old Testament tabernacle and temples were symbolically designed to point to the cosmic eschatological reality that God’s tabernacling presence, formerly limited to the Holy of Holies, was to be extended throughout the whole earth’.33 For Beale, the physical temple is to disappear only to be replaced by a literal non-physical temple, the church, which is ‘fulfillment of the end-time temple prophesied in the Old Testament’.34 From this brief survey, there appears to be overwhelming support for the understanding that Paul’s use of temple imagery is rooted in the notion that the church has now replaced the Jerusalem Temple.35 The primary assumption is that the sole reference point for Paul’s use of temple imagery is rooted in his Jewish eschatological understanding and association with the Jerusalem temple cult. As McKelvey clearly puts it, Paul, as an ‘orthodox Jew by upbringing … did not and could not think of many temples, but of one’.36 Lanci has taken issue with this problematic reading by suggesting that the Jewish temple cult also bears several resemblances to Gentile cultic practices and, often, it is difficult to determine whether Paul is specifically referring to Jewish or Gentile religious 28. R. J. McKelvey, The New Temple: The Church in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). 29. McKelvey, The New Temple, p. 74. 30. McKelvey, The New Temple, p. 75. See also his discussion in pp. 75–91. 31. See McKelvey, The New Temple, pp. 92–178. 32. G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004). 33. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, p. 25. 34. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, p. 253. See also his exposition in pp. 253–59. 35. This reading also finds wide support in commentaries. For example, G. F. Snyder, First Corinthians: A Faith Community Commentary (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1992), pp. 41–42: ‘the faith community has now replaced the Jewish temple … the movement from Jewish temple to Christian faith community became an absolute necessity for the first Christians’. See also T. S. Wardle, ‘Continuity and Discontinuity: The Temple and Early Christian Identity’, PhD dissertation (Duke University, 2008). 36. McKelvey, The New Temple, p. 106.



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traditions.37 This is further supported by Malina: ‘The Corinthians need not be concerned about the Jerusalem Temple or pilgrimage or whatever is bound up with Israelite temple worship, since what that temple offers can be experienced in their gathering.’38 Furthermore, while comparative studies between Paul’s use of temple imagery and wider temple theology in the OT, contemporary Judaism and Qumran scrolls may have yielded significant results, they unfortunately reduce temple imagery into a survey of parallels or connection of ideas through usage of certain catchwords.39 In addition, attempts to explain the use of temple imagery from a biblical theology approach often fail to take into account the context of the passage and what the use of temple imagery would have meant to Paul’s audience, leaving the significance of such imagery grossly undervalued in the minds of the recipients. For useful means of communication and for the full force of the imagery to be felt, it is crucial that both the author using the imagery and recipients reading or hearing it should be able to give such imagery the same content. But if discrepancy in understanding the imagery occurs, then both parties might be speaking in two different languages. As such, it is essential that in using temple imagery, Paul would have to ensure that it conveys the message that is not only clear to the predominant Gentile Christcommunity but also one they are able to readily identify with. 6. Power of Imagery The power of imagery lies not only in the mind of the author but also in how members of the audience understand and interpret the imagery within its symbolic universe. The Christ-community in Corinth not only originates from a pagan background but continues to live in an environment where temple architecture and buildings still greet its members daily. Furthermore, participation in temple worship and related activities continues to be part of their lifestyle, as highlighted earlier. This clearly establishes that the symbolic universe of the Christ-community remains aligned and associated to the pagan temples. As such, it is reasonable to assume that any mention of ‘God’s temple’ would naturally conjure up the reality that is closest and most familiar to the Gentile Christ-believers. This reality is almost certainly that of the pagan temples in Corinth and not the Jerusalem Temple that appeared to be far removed from their reality. As such, an understanding of temple-replacement theology operative in the mind of the Gentile believers living under the shadow of the pagan temples would appear to be not only odd but also remote. Hence the following questions remain. What did Paul

37. For a brief survey of scholarship that challenges the notion of temple replacement theology, see Lanci, A New Temple, pp. 7–23, especially pp. 11–13. See also Hogeterp, Paul and God’s Temple, pp. 271–378. 38. B. J. Malina and J. J. Pilch, Social Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 2006), p. 75. 39. This is seen prominently in Beale’s The Temple and the Church’s Mission.

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hope to achieve by using temple imagery in addressing the problems within the Corinthian community? If temples in the Graeco-Roman world are seen as powerful symbols and expression of the identity of the adherents, what role did temple imagery play in the formation of Christian identity and the transformation of the Christ-believers in light of the truth of the gospel of Christ? 7. Paul’s Use of Temple Imagery in the Formation of Christian Identity I will employ the theory of social identity formation as part of the interpretative framework in investigating Paul’s use of temple imagery in the Corinthian correspondence. According to Henri Tajfel, social identity process primarily involves three dimensions in establishing the ethos, values, status and boundaries for a particular group as against other groups in a society – the cognitive, emotional and evaluative dimensions.40 The cognitive dimension provides the group members with a strong sense of belonging and distinctiveness as compared to other groups. The emotional dimension brings various rituals and practices to enhance the emotional ties in group dynamics to establish a strong sense of solidarity, identity, and belonging to the group. The evaluative dimension deals with how the members within the group rate themselves in relation to other groups. This social identity formation theory initially developed by Tajfel and further explored by John Turner, has been widely employed in Pauline studies.41 7.1 Cognitive dimension – temple as unifying symbol In the first use of temple imagery in 1 Cor. 3.16-17, Paul begins with a rhetorical question: Ou0k oi1date o3ti nao_ v qeou= e0ste kai _ to_ pneu=ma tou= qeou= oi0kei= e0n u9mi=n.42 Interestingly, similar construction is also found in 1 Cor. 6.16, where temple imagery appears for the second time: ou0k oi1date o3ti o9 kollw/mrnov th?= po/rnh? e4n sw= ma/ e0stin. William Wuellner suggests that rhetorical questions beginning with ou0k oi1date function to increase adherence

40. H. Tajfel, Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (London: Academic Press, 1978), p. 28. 41. For example, see P. F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letters (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003); A. S. May, ‘The Body for the Lord’: Sex and Identity in 1 Corinthians 5–7 (London: T&T Clark, 2004); D. K. Darko, No Longer Living as the Gentiles: Differentiation and Shared Ethical Values in Ephesians 4.17–6.9 (London: T&T Clark, 2008); and Tucker, ‘You Belong to Christ’. For reviews of recent scholarship on social identity in Pauline studies, see Tucker, ‘You Belong to Christ’, pp. 87–124. For various approaches in exploring Christian identity, see the collected essays in B. Holmberg (ed.), Exploring Early Christian Identity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). 42. This is the first in a series of ten rhetorical questions in 1 Corinthians that begins with ou0k oi1date. See 1 Cor. 5.6; 6.2, 3, 9, 15, 16, 19; 9.13, 24.



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to what is already accepted in the community.43 If Wuellner is right, then it strongly suggests that Paul’s use of temple imagery here is of utmost significance and importance. By using the ou0k oi1date construction, Paul is not advocating a new teaching nor reiterating anything that the Corinthians are not aware of. On the contrary, he is reinforcing what they already know – that they are God’s temple. At the same time, the ou0k oi1date construction may also imply a rebuke44 for their failure to comprehend this truth. As such, temple imagery is not simply a convenient rhetorical device that Paul employs; instead, it is a deliberate and calculated attempt to reinforce the truth of the gospel by appealing to the religious reality that the Corinthians believers are familiar with and the importance of which in their existence cannot be denied. Considered to be at the centre of the universe or icons of the world, temples in the Graeco-Roman world were central to the life and experience of city dwellers. Pausanias refers to the sanctuary of Apollos at Dephi as the Omphalos or navel of the world.45 Livy describes the Capitol in Rome as the stronghold of empire and the head of the world.46 Tacitus further describes the Capitol as a temple that is founded as the symbol of imperial greatness, and its origin, building and dedication were considered as part of the Roman heritage.47 The Parthenon in Athens, the temple of Zeus in Olympia, and the temple of Artemis in Ephesus testify to the centrality of the temple in the civic life of the Graeco-Roman world. Temples typically occupied prominent and often elevated ground in the most strategic location of the city. The structures were very elaborate and imposing, and were buildings that first greeted the eyes of visitors making their travel or pilgrimage to the cities.48 Apart from being places of dwelling for the deities49 and for cultic activities, temples also played significant roles in the communal development of the society, where they functioned as meeting and dining places for social gatherings. They also offered a resting place for weary travellers. Temples also made a major contribution to the economic 43. W. Wuellner, ‘Paul as Pastor: The Function of Rhetorical Questions in First Corinthians’, in A. Vanhoye (ed.), L’Apôtre Paul: Personnalité, style et conception du ministère (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1986), p. 60. 44. Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians, p. 66. 45. Pausanias, Description of Greece, 10.16.3. Interestingly, Jerusalem is also considered as the navel of the country for the Jews. See Jos B. J. 3.52. 46. Livy, History of Rome, 1.55.5-6. 47. Tacitus, Hist, 3.72. 48. For discussion on architecture for temples in ancient Greek, see J. Pedley, Sanctuaries and the Sacred in the Ancient Greek World (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 57–77. See also E. M. Orlin, Temples, Religion and Politics in the Roman Republic (Leiden: Brill, 1997). 49. For Greek understanding that temples function as the house of God, see W. Burkert, ‘The Meaning and Function of the Temple in Classical Greek’, in M. V. Fox (ed.), Temple in Society (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1988), pp. 29–31. 50. Acts 19.8-41 portrays the temple of Artemis as representing the wealth, power, status, and influence within the community and the wider world. It is also the economic engine that supports the city’s wealth and employment (Acts 19.23-25).

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growth and prosperity of cities.50 Apart from the cultic, social and economic functions, the Roman Empire also added another dimension to the function of temples, those that were officially sanctioned serving to advance the political propaganda of the empire.51 Participation in temple rites not only cemented the relationship between the deities and adherents, but also served to bind all classes of the city together.52 In Corinth, the temple of Aphrodite played a very significant role in the civic life and identity of the city (throughout the classical period, the city of Corinth, for example, was known as Aphrodite’s city).53 As such, temples not only defined the existence of the community but also symbolized that community’s unity. Each served further as a ‘vehicle for promoting central systems of values which served to hold ancient societies together’.54 As such, temples – and not palaces, town halls, commercial buildings – were the most important structures and were a major source of pride in civic society. Paul’s use of temple imagery is not merely a serious reminder to the Corinthians about the importance of temples in their symbolic universe; it also constitutes nothing less than a frontal critique of their failure to appreciate and comprehend what a temple should be and all that it represents. Rather than appropriating the unifying presence of Christ to bind them together as a powerful and attractive icon to the immediate society and beyond, where the values aligned to the gospel of Christ could be promoted, the Corinthians had allowed their dissensions to create divisive provincialism and dire damage to the temple of God. Instead of building up the temple of God that would have defined their identity in Christ, they were going in the opposite direction by destroying the temple. In Paul’s eyes, these acts of causing dissension were not merely casual, but criminal.55As such, for failing to remember the symbolism of temples, the severe penalty that corresponds with the seriousness of the crime awaits them (1 Cor. 3.17). 7.2 Emotive dimension: temple destruction and desecration Since temples define the existence of the community, any destruction of an iconic symbol that fosters the self-definition, pride and identity of the community is viewed as a shameful and despicable act of desecration. 51. For further discussion on functions of Greek and Roman temples, see Lanci, A New Temple for Corinth, pp. 95–104. See also Burkert ‘The Meaning and Function of the Temple’, pp. 39–44; Pedley, Sanctuaries and the Sacred; and R. C. Fay, ‘Greco-Roman Concepts of Deity’, in Porter (ed.), Paul’s World, pp. 51–79. 52. Pedley, Sanctuaries and the Sacred, p. 11. 53. Strabo, Geography 8.6.20c, 21b, describes Corinth as the sacred city of Aphrodite. While this description may have referred to the pre-146 bce city and not the Roman Corinth Paul visited, it nevertheless underscores the importance of the temple as a unifying symbol of the city. 54. Lanci, A New Temple, p. 104. See also Burkert, ‘The Meaning and Function of the Temple’, pp. 39–44. 55. Levison, ‘The Spirit and the Temple’, p. 192.



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Tacitus describes the destruction of the Capitol in Rome, which brought the entire city into chaos, as ‘the most deplorable and disgraceful event that had happened to the Commonwealth of Rome since the foundation of the city’.56 As the stronghold of the empire and head of the world,57 its destruction was tantamount to the destruction of the metaphorical head of the government. Paul picks up this notion in his warning to the Corinthians in 1 Cor. 3.17, where he declares: ‘If anyone destroys (fqei/rei) God’s temple, God will destroy (fqerei=) that person.’ What does Paul mean when he uses the word fqei/rw? Lanci argues that fqei/rw refers to ruin or damage58 while Shanor contends that it refers to damage done to a building under construction and that Paul never intends it to refer to complete destruction.59 Garland rightly points out that this interpretation fails to appreciate Paul’s use of metaphor.60 In this context, Paul is issuing a stern warning to the Corinthians. Two interesting facts are to be noted in Paul’s language of temple destruction in 1 Cor. 3.16-17. First, Paul is not talking about the temple being destroyed by enemies or outsiders, but by the devotees themselves. Second, the language of destruction in 1 Cor. 3.17 stands in sharp contrast to the flow of Paul’s argument in 1 Cor. 3.10-15, where the imagery of construction is employed to describe the building of the temple of God that constitutes the people of God.61 This contrast is further amplified in 1 Cor. 6.19, where Paul appeals to temple imagery in rebuking the Corinthians for desecrating it by participation in sexual immorality. Therefore, the impact of Paul’s rhetoric and the force of temple imagery can be strongly felt. Paul could not have made it clearer that any destruction of God’s temple is tantamount to a serious offence and a sacrilegious act of desecration, and this warrants a corresponding severe penalty of divine judgement. It is interesting to note that this announcement of severe punishment appears in a series of failures of the Christ-believers – adultery involving a person’s father’s wife (1 Cor. 5.1-13); lawsuits among believers (1 Cor. 6.1-8); visiting prostitutes (1 Cor. 6.9-20); marriage and divorce (1 Corinthians 7); consuming idol food (1 Corinthians 8-10); chaos in worship (1 Cor. 11.2– 14.40); and possible doctrinal error (1 Corinthians 15) – but none evokes such severe penalty. This penalty of divine judgement is extraordinary. Even an act that outstrips the most outrageous pagan sexual practice only receives the penalty of temporary ostracism from the community (1 Cor. 5.1-8). But those who divide the church are subject to a severe divine judgement, a fact 56. Tacitus, Hist, 3.72. 57. Livy, History of Rome, 1.55.5-6. 58. Lanci, A New Temple, pp. 67–68. 59. J. Shanor, ‘Paul as Master Builder: Construction Terms in First Corinthians’, NTS 33 (1988), pp. 470–71. 60. Garland, 1 Corinthians, p. 120. 61. For the argument that the building imagery in 1 Cor. 3.10-15 constitutes the construction of God’s temple that climaxes at 1 Cor. 3.16-17, see Levison, ‘The Spirit and the Temple’, p. 193; Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, pp. 99–105; Hogeterp, Paul and God’s Temple, pp. 311–31.

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that not only underscores the seriousness of the offence but creates a deep sense of shock among the hearers and serves as a stern warning for those who deliberately attempt to cause dissensions in the community. By publicly declaring their failures, Paul is shaming the Corinthians. The divisions of the Corinthian community into numerous parties contradict the unity of the one Temple in which God chooses to dwell through his Spirit. Instead of building up the temple that could be a source of pride and identity for the Christ-believers, their practices of competitive partisanship (1.10-13), boastful arrogance (1.29, 3.21; 4.7) and jealousy and strife (3.3) have, on the contrary, contributed to its destruction. Paul allows his readers to imagine that their own actions are not only incompatible with the ethos of their existence as a temple of God but also undermine the survival of this fledgling community. As such, Paul’s use of temple imagery speaks of shame, horror and shock that are beyond words. This imagery conjures up a very powerful visual appeal to the emotions of the Corinthians, causing them to pause and reflect on how far they have fallen short through their error in causing dissensions in the community. It is a harsh imagery that evokes in their memory the despicable act of temple destruction. By calling the community to function in a way that is similar to the way temples in the Graeco-Roman world would have functioned, Paul is able to underscore the fact that the temple of the deities serves as a powerful symbol of the unity that exists between the deity and worshippers. It also powerfully conveys the message of how serious their error is that, in their own internal strife, they have forgotten the common good they should uphold. Just as a particular deity was understood to dwell in a Greek temple dedicated to it, so Paul envisions the Corinthian community as a temple of God that is indwelt by the Holy Spirit.62 By using this imagery, Paul is realigning the Corinthians into the new symbolic world of the gospel he proclaims. Paul is certainly very concerned that the temple he has been building (cf. 1 Cor. 3.10-15) is now being destroyed by the Corinthians. To bring home the seriousness of the actions of the Corinthians in dividing themselves into factions, Paul declares that God’s judgement will inevitably and inescapably fall on them. 7.3 Evaluative dimension – temple purity and holiness In 1 Cor. 6.12-20, Paul expresses his concern that the Christ-believers are still behaving like the society surrounding them, some justifying their sexual 62.

Cf. Thiselton, First Corinthians, pp. 474–75:

The universal presence of images of the deities in Graeco-Roman temples would have made the principle more vivid to first-century readers … and Paul declares that the very person of the Holy Spirit of God, by parity of reasoning, stands to the totality of the bodily, everyday life of the believer … in the same relation of influence and molding of identity as the images of deities in pagan temples.



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immorality on the grounds of ‘all things are lawful for me’ (6.12). In order to emphasize the seriousness of such immorality, Paul appeals to temple imagery in 6.19: ‘Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?’ As I have argued earlier, Paul’s use of ou0k oi1date is to underscore that the Corinthians are already aware that they are the temple of God. It is also interesting to note elsewhere in this letter that Paul advocates believing spouses are to remain with unbelieving spouses in order to make the unbelieving partners holy (1 Cor. 7.12-16). In other words, Paul believes the Christ-community is intended to make those who are outsiders holy. But the direct opposite is now taking place, believers polluting themselves by uniting with prostitutes by means of illicit sexual activity, and thereby further polluting the Christ-community. Paul thus appeals to temple imagery by imposing the holiness boundary as one of the critical pillars of the community’s selfunderstanding and of self-definition for the Christ-believers. Moving on to 2 Cor. 6.14–7.1, the theme of holiness emerges with greater intensity, Paul’s charging the believers of being ‘unequally yoked’ with those outside the Christ-community. To provoke the Corinthians to evaluate their relationship with such outsiders, Paul once again appeals to temple imagery by declaring in 2 Cor. 6.16: ‘For we are the temple of the living God.’ It is interesting to note that Paul’s use of temple imagery comes immediately after a series of five rhetorical questions formulated in an antithetical fashion that demonstrates the incompatibility of relationships between Christ-believers and pagans. Each pair speaks of the mutually exclusive relationships standing in direct and stark opposition between the ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ respectively, as seen in the following:

righteousness light Christ believers temple of God

against against against against against

lawlessness darkness Beliar unbelievers temple of idols

The declaration that the Christ-believers are the temple of God in 2 Cor. 6.16 further justifies the separation of incompatible relationships. This is further elaborated by a direct command (2 Cor. 6.17-18) and an exhortation to purity and holiness (2 Cor. 7.1). Paul’s language here clearly highlights the fact that the more positively outsiders are valued, the more positive conformity with them is valued. As noted by Barnett: ‘it is precisely at the point where that “temple” meets the culture of “idols” in the Gentile metropolis of Corinth that the challenge to compromise and syncretism becomes most painful, and to which the Corinthians are in danger of succumbing’.63 As can be seen from Paul’s call to preserve purity of the community by expelling the sinful brother (1 Cor. 63. P. Barnett, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 351.

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5.1-13) and shunning sexual immorality (1 Cor. 6.18), it is evident that purity and holiness are the social boundaries that define the Corinthian believers from the rest of society.64 Paul’s urgent tone suggests there is a pressing need to correct the behaviour of the Christ-believers. Already there is disunity and dissension and numerous other problems and issues of non-conformity affecting the unrepentant and recalcitrant community, summed up in 2 Cor. 12.20-21. Paul cannot afford to allow the non-conformity of those Christbelievers to continue persistently. Thus he makes a desperate cry by appealing to temple imagery to urge the believers to align themselves to the value of the gospel of Christ, without which the very existence of the Christ-community as an alternative assembly would be at stake, its life and witness severely compromised. In using temple imagery, Paul is differentiating his audience from the surrounding society by promoting positive group identity and moral standards that are compatible with their new status in Christ.65 According to Pickett, Paul’s use of cultic language emphasizes that only certain patterns of behaviour are congruous with the identity conferred by this language.66 As such, the temple must remain pure if God is to be present, and this means that the members must preserve strict standards of behaviour that reflect the attributes of the dwelling deity. In this respect, Paul is challenging the Corinthians to evaluate their relationships with outsiders. It is worthwhile observing that Paul casts his opinion of outsiders in 2 Cor. 6.14–7.1 in an extremely negative and condescending manner. This only magnifies Paul’s rhetorical force in highlighting the fact that he now has reasons to believe that the Corinthians have given up their quest for holiness with a passion for the unholy. It is these faults that the temple metaphor so acutely addresses. Paul drives home the point that the temple of God evokes an image of a community of holiness that is aligned to a holy God, a community comprising Christ-believers who devote themselves to God and to one another, and a community that is distinct and unlike the other communities existing in Corinth – these are the standards that the Christ-community has failed to live up to. 8. Conclusion By employing temple imagery in the Corinthian correspondence, Paul creatively draws on the previous symbolic universe of the Christ-community

64. For discussion on Paul laying down conditions for the maintenance to preserve purity of the community as a temple of God, see Newton, The Concept of Purity, pp. 79– 114. 65. Cf. J. H. Neyrey, Paul, in Other Words: A Cultural Reading of his Letters (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), pp. 96–97. 66. R. Pickett, The Cross in Corinth: The Social Significance of the Death of Jesus (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), p. 92.



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and uses it powerfully in his appeal to realign the community to the ethos of the gospel of Christ in the formation of a distinct Christian identity. What emerges from Paul’s use of temple imagery is a vivid and extraordinary image that holds together a number of different notions, such as community identity, the building up of community, and the appearance of the community to outsiders. For Paul, what identifies the Christ-community and what will identify it to the outside world is the fact that this community is a unified community, a holy community, a distinct community being set apart from the surrounding society – one that is transformed by the gospel of Christ. Paul’s vision in creating an authentic Christian identity rooted in this gospel is for the ultimate purpose that this Christ-community will serve both as an attraction and invitation to those outside of it, thus preventing it from being conformed to the value systems of this world. It is my hope that this chapter, written in honour of Dr William S. Campbell who guided me in my PhD research, will in some small way serve to advance his significant contribution in the area of identity formation in the Pauline communities.67

67. See W. S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity (London: T&T Clark, 2006).

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Chapter 12

Three Types of Identity Formation for Paul as Servant of Christ Jesus in Romans Daniel Patte William S. Campbell challenged us, and continues to challenge us, to pay close attention to the construction of Christian identity as represented in Paul’s letters. This is a timely question that he developed throughout his scholarly career, starting with his Edinburgh PhD thesis in 1972, as he grappled with the complex issues raised by Romans 9–11; then in his book, Paul’s Gospel in Intercultural Context: Jews and Gentiles in the Letter to the Romans (1991 and 1992); and most directly in his Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity (2006) and numerous articles, including ‘Ernst Käsemann on Romans: The Way Forward or the End of an Era?’1 In the process he cogently contributed to the development of the ‘new perspective’ on Paul that compellingly opened our eyes to the possibility of reading Paul’s letters, and the letter to the Romans in particular, in a radically different way. A brief review of the development of the scholarship on Paul is helpful both to appreciate the contribution of William Campbell and to discern the long-term implications of the scholarly trajectory put in motion by the ‘new perspective’. By 1960, as I was entering the field of Pauline studies with Franz J. Leenhardt,2 it seemed that scholarly interpretations of Paul had no option but to continue to read Paul and reflect on his letters within the confines of a long line of Western interpretations going from Augustine to modern Western scholarship that refined it with a solid critical exegesis. Of course, further studies of Romans were still necessary in order to continue to refine the understanding of this text across a chasm of 20 centuries. So, there was a never-ending stream of new studies of Romans and related topics. Yet, this 1. W. S. Campbell, ‘Ernst Käsemann on Romans: The Way Forward or the End of an Era?’, in C. Grenholm and D. Patte (eds), Modern Readings of Romans, Vol. 10., Romans through History and Cultures (London and New York: T&T Clark International, forthcoming, October 2011). 2. F. J. Leenhardt, The Epistle to the Romans: A Commentary (trans. Harold Knight; London: Lutterworth Press, 1961 [French 1957]).

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stream of studies was rigorously canalized through the control of the questions that could appropriately be asked. This Western scholarship strictly delimited the field of legitimate and plausible interpretations of Romans; reading the letter in a different way was deemed an irresponsible (illegitimate) betrayal of the text. The only legitimate exegeses were (and still are for many) framed by a detailed philological approach that carefully assessed the meaning of each word in Paul’s complex Jewish and Graeco-Roman linguistic, cultural, religious and philosophical contexts. These philological investigations were in turn framed by a quest for ‘the’ historical Paul aimed at elucidating how Paul crafted this language into a distinctive theological argument. The plausibility of these conclusions were assessed by demonstrating the coherence of Paul’s theological argument – an argument held together by anthropological concerns for individual faith, justification and salvation, in line with the ‘introspective consciousness of the West’ (as Krister Stendahl3 called it). This exegesis and its results were normative. Theologians – including Karl Barth4 and Anders Nygren5 – who dared to develop interpretations that stepped outside the clearly marked boundaries of the field of legitimate and plausible interpretations were simply brushed aside; their commentaries were viewed as eccentric theological elaborations lacking any proper grounding in Paul’s text.6 Opening different ways of reading Paul (such as the ‘new perspective’ and ‘apocalyptic’ readings of Paul) required stepping outside the worldview framed by this dominant scholarly tradition – both an exegetical and a theological tradition. In addition to this creative intellectual feat, it was necessary to present these different readings of Paul in such a way that biblical scholars steeped in the traditional approach could recognize them as critical and worthy of consideration; being brushed aside, as the theologians and their interpretation were, would prevent any true contribution to Pauline scholarship. Thus, introducing new interpretations of Paul was a daunting task. It involved challenging ideological claims that established a certain scholarship and its results as the only true one – as the only legitimate and plausible way of reading Paul. Only a cohort of scholars, each making his/her distinctive contribution, could hope to succeed.

3. K. Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1976); N. Dahl, Studies in Paul: Theology for the Early Christian Mission (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1977), pp. 107–12; L. Gaston, Paul and the Torah (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), pp. 116–23. 4. K. Barth, Der Römerbrief (Bern: Bäschlin, 1918 [with several subsequent editions]); See K. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (trans. from the 6th edn by E. C. Hoskyns; London: Oxford University Press, 1933). 5. A. Nygren, Commentary on Romans (trans. C. C. Rasmussen; Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1949 [Swedish original, 1944]). 6. See C. Grenholm, Romans Interpreted: A Comparative Analysis of the Commentaries of Barth, Nygren, Cranfield, and Wilckens on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1990). Grenholm documents the ‘veto powers’ that exegetes use against theologians’ interpretations of Romans.



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William Campbell is part of this cohort. Much progress has been made. But when will we be in a position to say that we have succeeded? Will it be when the ideological claims of the old perspective are rejected and another type of interpretation (a form of the ‘new perspective’) is established as the only legitimate and plausible way of reading Paul? This is a tantalizing prospect. Ah! To have a certitude about a Pauline teaching that would avoid all the traps of the introspective consciousness, patriarchalism and anti-Judaism! Yet, in my estimation, inverting the ideological claims does not address the problem, but duplicates or even compounds it, because it would be, once again, avoiding to assume our ethical responsibility for our interpretive choices.7 Hidden behind our certitude about ‘what the scriptural text says’ – even if our certitude is warranted by the most rigorous scholarship – like the fundamentalists of all stripes we can then be content to act according to ‘what the text says’ without assessing the effect of our actions upon others (and ourselves), because we erroneously believe we have no choice in interpretation.8 Thus, I want to argue that addressing the problem posed by the monopolizing claims of traditional philological interpretations of Romans ultimately demands from us, critical biblical scholars, the acknowledgement that, taken together, traditional and new exegetical approaches and their results actually offer to the readers a choice between equally legitimate and plausible interpretations, even though these are very different and often divergent from each other. Then we, readers, can recognize that we actually have a decision to make; choosing one or the other of these interpretations is far from being indifferent. Choosing an interpretation of a scriptural text always matters, because it affects people’s lives, and it is too often a matter of life and death. To account for these different interpretive choices, it is useful to make a distinction between ‘legitimate’ interpretations (that are appropriately grounded in the text), ‘plausible’ interpretations (that make sense, because their theological and hermeneutical arguments are coherent), and ‘valid’ interpretations (that have a positive value according to an ethical assessment of its effect in concrete contexts). After explaining why different kinds of exegesis can be viewed as equally ‘legitimate’, the ‘plausibility’ of different readings of Romans will easily be clarified and illustrated by presenting the three types of identity formation for Paul as the servant/slave of Christ Jesus in Romans 1.1. Then the reader will be left with a choice and the question: which is the interpretation that has a greater ‘validity’ (a contextual choice).

7. See D. Patte, Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: A Reevaluation (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995). 8. M. Bal cogently argues and demonstrates through her analysis of a diversity of interpretations of the same text that the most effective way to challenge fundamentalists is to show them that other interpretations are legitimate and plausible when one proceeds to readings that are even more ‘literal’ than their own – rather than denying the legitimacy and plausibility of their interpretations. See M. Bal, Loving Yusuf: Conceptual Travels from Present to Past (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

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A first question raised by the preceding statements is: how can biblical scholars recognize as equally legitimate a plurality of divergent readings of Romans? A first condition is that each of these readings be shown to be fully anchored in the text through the use of rigorous critical exegetical methods. The stranglehold that the traditional exegetical methodology had in Pauline studies was broken from the outside by a broad methodological quest that was developed in the second half of the twentieth century in hermeneutics (including hermeneutics of suspicion), linguistics, semiotics, cultural studies, post-modernism, feminism, and post-colonialism. On this basis, biblical scholars developed a wide array of exegetical methods. For Pauline studies this meant that beyond the philological critical exegeses (framed in a quest for the historical Paul), one could envision using rhetorical analyses and, later, narrative, ideological, cultural, political, literary and structural approaches to study Romans. By recognizing that there is a plurality of critical exegetical methods, we become aware of the fact that we, as biblical scholars, have to make a choice, since these methods have different goals; and beyond this methodological choice, we can recognize that ‘ordinary’ readers necessarily make comparable choices – textual or analytical choices. The rise of these new critical methods has commonly been viewed as part of an exegetical warfare: a new critical method and its new conclusions about what Romans ‘meant’ are claimed to be more accurate and thus to demand the rejection of the conclusions resulting from older methods. The new critical approaches are developed in order to destroy the false claims of the old exegetical tradition. Alone, the new exegetical methods, at first primarily rhetoric analysis, will provide the basis for a ‘legitimate’ interpretation of the text. For instance, the practitioners of rhetorical analysis claimed – or were perceived as claiming – that ignoring the rhetoric of Romans necessarily leads to an inappropriate understanding of Romans. Yet exegetes who continue to use philological approaches (in increasingly sophisticated ways) reciprocated; convinced that their exegeses are legitimate, they simply ignore the highly arbitrary rhetorical studies of Romans. From the perspectives of hermeneutics9 and semiotics10 – that is, from the perspectives of research concerning how meaning is produced through communication and thus also in the reading process – this exegetical warfare is quite puzzling. Is it not yet clear that meaning is not contained in the text as container? Rather than going into a theoretical discussion, let me make this point in very practical terms: is it not clear what happens when one uses different 9. E.g., P. Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics (trans. Don Ihde; Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974). 10. E.g., D. Patte, The Religious Dimensions of Biblical Texts: Greimas’s Structural Semiotics and Biblical Exegesis (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990).



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critical methods? An illustration in synoptic studies makes it obvious. When we choose to use an exegetical method – for instance, form criticism, or redaction criticism, or oral hermeneutics, or narrative methods, instead of a quest for the historical Jesus – what have we done? We have simply chosen to view as most significant one or another feature of the Gospel texts. For instance, we can read Mark for the information it directly or indirectly provides about the historical Jesus, by paying close attention to the features of the text that can be shown to provide reliable historical information. But, we can change our focus and pay close attention to the forms of the pericopes, because these forms reflect the Sitz im Leben of particular traditions, and thus give us a glimpse of the development of the Jesus tradition in very early church contexts. Or we can focus our attention on the redactional features of Mark because they reflect the theological perspective of the redactor (by contrast with the theological perspectives of earlier traditions, of the other Gospels, or of the historical Jesus); or on the oral/aural character of Mark (and its implication for making sense of this Gospel); or again on the plot and narrative characteristics of this Gospel text (because the text of Mark calls its hearers/readers to enter the story). The point is quite simple: by choosing one critical method (rather than another), we choose one of the features of the text as most significant. All these different studies of the Synoptics are legitimate; each investigates specific features of Mark. Their respective results and conclusions are very different from each other, simply because they address different questions to the texts of Mark. Of course, one should not and cannot use the results of one approach to address the questions of another – or to criticize this other approach. This would be failing to recognize that different interpreters are interested in – find most significant – different features of Mark. Furthermore, the diversity of exegeses of Mark is enough to suggest that, as biblical scholars do, ‘ordinary’ readers make sense of a text by choosing one aspect of a Gospel as most significant, and by bracketing out other aspects of the text as less significant. And this is legitimate. Human beings make sense of a text or of a speech by focusing on one aspect of this discourse, out of which they construct the meaning of the text for themselves. Biblical scholars do the same by using a diversity of critical methodologies. And this is legitimate. This brief illustration clarifies the flurries of studies of Romans. Traditional philological exegeses were, and continue to be, focused on certain features of the text that certain exegetes perceived as most significant, because it gave them access to the distinctive theological argument of the letter and to Paul’s theology – or more specifically, to the theology of Paul-the-theologian, a figure they constructed. By choosing this methodology (with many variants) exegetes choose as most significant the features of the letter characterized by Paul’s key theological concepts. The study of the history of each concept (philology) clarifies the particular way in which Paul uses it and re-crafted it so that it might contribute to his theological argument. The exegetes justify their choice of certain textual features as most significant by another construct: a conception of the purpose of the letter. Romans is viewed as addressing

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readers/hearers with the same kind of interests and needs as the exegetes: Christians in Rome who do not know Paul and have a very approximate knowledge, if not a wrong understanding, of Paul’s gospel, and who need a systematic clarification of the theological points about which there might be misunderstandings. There is nothing extraordinary or illegitimate in all these exegetical moves. Any exegetical study involves envisioning the author (here, Paul-thetheologian) and the effect of the discourse (its purpose), and ‘constructing’ them in such a way that they make sense for us. Of course, as any interpreter, we construct these in our image; this is the hermeneutical circle necessary for any meaningful interpretation, which is legitimate as long as we acknowledge its role, as Gadamer11 taught us. There is nothing extraordinary or illegitimate in this choice of significant features in Romans. Any didactic discourse, such as Romans, includes an argument that unfolds somewhat like a narrative (actually it presupposes a narrative or a meta-narrative). This dimension of any didactic discourse12 is commonly viewed as the most significant feature of a text by common readers as well as by scholars, because it conveys specific information and ethical teaching to which one can readily respond or even implement. This is an important dimension of Romans that needs to be accounted for – in the same way that focusing on the redactional features of Mark is a good way to elucidate Mark’s theology. Both philological studies of Romans and redaction critical studies of Mark are legitimate interpretations. But only insofar as one recognizes their limitations. In the case of Mark, it is illegitimate to claim or to pretend that a redaction critical reading is the only way to understand this Gospel! As it would be illegitimate to demand that any of the other exegetical studies of Mark (the quest for the historical Jesus, form critical, oral/aural, narrative, or political studies) conform to redaction critical studies or contribute to these. These different methods are making sense out of different features of the Gospel text for different purposes. So it is with Romans. Philological exegeses of Romans and their agendas become illegitimate when scholars claim that they are the only way of understanding Romans and that other exegeses should conform to them. The development of different exegetical studies of Romans by the ‘new perspective’ (and other alternate interpretations) should not be viewed as a ‘warfare’ against old interpretations, but rather as the exploration of textual territories that, so far, were ignored by critical exegesis.13 Thus, one should 11. H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (trans. G. Barden and J. Cumming; New York: Seabury, 1975). 12. Greimas’ semiotics describes this dimension as the ‘narrative syntax’ (or ‘didactic syntax’) of a discourse which elaborates on the ‘credo’ (the assertion, ‘I believe’) posited by a text and its elaboration into an ideological process – that can easily become ‘frozen’ (then potentially destructive). See the discussion of ‘narrative syntax’ in Patte, Religious Dimensions of Biblical Texts. 13. Although the history of the reception of Romans shows they were important for many readers. See the ten volumes of the Romans through History and Cultures Series (T&T Clark).



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not present a rhetorical study of Romans as rejecting philological studies of Romans and as denying the legitimacy of the philological presentation of Paul’s theological argument.14 Philological and rhetoric exegeses simply choose as most significant different features of the text that cannot and should not be directly compared. Each kind of exegesis is legitimate insofar as it faithfully represents the features of Romans it has chosen to study. The fact that philological and rhetoric exegeses reach different conclusions is actually a signal that each might be legitimately focusing on its chosen textual dimension. Rhetorical studies focus, as can be expected, on the rhetorical features of Paul’s letters that reflect the dynamics of Paul’s interaction with his addresses, his concerns for the relations between Jewish and Gentile communities, and thus the ideological categories that frame these relations. This is another dimension of any discourse; the speaker/author necessarily engages her/his audience in a hybrid semantic dimension that expresses the speaker’s/author’s views and points in terms of the intended audience’s views, and vice versa, combining them into ambivalent ‘discoursive’ dimensions (as Greimas calls them) that can be read differently according to what the reading emphasizes.15 Once again, it is a dimension of a text that can legitimately be viewed as the most significant and thus the basis of a legitimate interpretation of a text, provided, of course, that it does not claim an exclusive legitimacy. The interest in the rhetorical features of Paul’s letters is not new. Bultmann’s dissertation was already devoted to the study of Paul’s use of the diatribe.16 Yet, Bultmann’s primary concern remained with Paul’s theology and thus with his theological arguments.17 Similarly, Aletti18 paid close attention to the rhetoric of Romans, although his concerns remained with Paul’s theology. In both cases, rhetorical studies were perceived as a supplement to traditional studies, as part of a quest for the (singular) meaning of Paul’s letter to the Romans; they would contribute to refine our understanding of Paul’s theological argument. Since the rhetorical dimension of a discourse is hybrid, and includes a rhetorical ‘re-presentation’ of the theological argument for an audience, this is a legitimate claim … provided of course that one does not claim that this kind of study exhausts what is expressed in the rhetorical dimension of the text, or even that it provides the touchstone to which all other interpretations must be measured. 14. This is not excluding the fact that, as any scholarly interpretation, these philological studies should be viewed as ever in need of refinement. 15. Once again I avoid going into a technical semiotic discussion of Greimas’s semiotics. See the discussion of ‘discoursive structures’ in Religious Dimensions of Biblical Texts. 16. R. Bultmann, Der Stil der paulinischen Predigt und die kynisch-stoische Diatribe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910 [1984]). 17. See, for instance, R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 2 vols (trans. K. Grobel; New York: Scribner, 1951–55). 18. J. N. Aletti, Comment Dieu est-il juste? Clefs pour interpréter l’épître aux Romains (Paris: Seuil, 1991).

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With Stanley Stowers, a detailed analysis of Paul’s rhetoric, combined with a fresh understanding of letter writing in that time, demanded recognition that rhetorical features of Paul’s letter could be taken as its most significant features quite distinct from other dimensions of the letter – and especially distinct from its theological argument (reconstructed through philological studies).19 Robert Jewett moves in the same direction as he systematically structures his Hermeneia commentary on the basis of his rhetorical analysis of Romans that he complements with a related cultural analysis, emphasizing the honour-shame community-context of this rhetoric.20 So did Neil Elliott, who after his study of the rhetoric of Romans followed a different trajectory as he increasingly read Romans as resistance literature, viewing the hybrid character of the rhetorical dimension of Romans as most significant.21 Similarly, other exegetical studies focused on the figurative dimension of the letter to the Romans,22 which turn out to comprise mostly apocalyptic figures, and thus developed what was called the ‘apocalyptic’ interpretations of Romans – including the studies of Ernst Käsemann,23 J. Christiaan Beker,24 Brendan Byrne25 and, most recently, Douglas A. Campbell,26 as well as my own interpretation. Similarly, the political interpretations focus on other distinctive features of the text. The list could be much longer. But these brief bibliographical allusions are enough to make the point that different exegeses choose as most significant different features of the letter to the Romans, in which they strive to anchor their interpretations. As such, each is legitimate, properly anchored in a dimension of the text. Yet, most, if not all, fall into the trap of claiming, or of implying, that their distinctive interpretations establish a basic truth about Paul’s teaching, to which all other interpretations must conform. One cannot make such a claim without renouncing the legitimacy of one’s interpretation, which depends upon our acknowledgment that we made a textual choice: through our methodological choice, we chose to see as most significant certain features of the text, and thus to bracket out other dimensions of the text. Let 19. S. K. Stowers, The Diatribe and Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981); S. K. Stowers, Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1986). These two books led to S. K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). 20. R. Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007). 21. N. Elliott, The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008). 22. What Greimas called the discoursive semantics and its relationship to the fundamental semantics. See the discussion of these structures in Religious Dimensions of Biblical Texts. 23. E. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans (trans. G. W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980 [German original, 1974]). 24. J. C. Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980). 25. B. Byrne, Romans (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996). 26. D. A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009).



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us repeat: the fact that there exists a plurality of critical exegetical methods, shows us that we, as biblical scholars, necessarily make an analytical or textual choice; we choose to focus our interpretation on what we view as a particularly significant aspect of the text; by making explicit our own analytical choices, we help ‘ordinary’ readers recognize that they make comparable choices, by privileging certain textual features that they (often subconsciously) perceive as particularly significant. 2. The ‘Plausibility’ of Different Kinds of Exegesis of Romans: Hermeneutical or Theological Choices A similar argument must now be developed about another type of interpretive choice that readers cannot avoid when they seek to make sense of a religious text. Through a hermeneutical process closely linked with our cultural and religious milieux, we construct the theological, ethical, and epistemological concepts that we find in the text in such a way that they might be ‘plausible’ for us. In this case, becoming aware of the hermeneutical choices we spontaneously make requires us to be confronted by the fact that one can conceive of these concepts in several ways. This is what Krister Stendahl has done for us in his essays in Paul among Jews and Gentiles by suggesting, for instance, that Paul’s ‘conversion’ (Gal. 1.13-16) could also be conceived of as a prophetic ‘call’; that Paul’s concept of ‘justification’ should not be confused with ‘forgiveness’; that rather than understanding ‘sin’ as ‘guilt’ (related to the ‘introspective consciousness of the West’), one could view it as ‘weakness’. This is also where the contribution of William S. Campbell is so important. Prolonging Stendahl’s questioning approach, Campbell – through his various publications and, not least, through his active participation in the Romans through History and Cultures programme in the Society of Biblical Literature (1998 to 2011; a programme that he currently co-chairs) – challenged us, and continues to challenge us, to recognize how constructed are our views of many key concepts of Paul. Beyond the way that the relationship between Jews and Gentiles has been posited for so long, throughout Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity Campbell forces us to recognize that there are alternative ways of understanding Pauline concepts such as ‘revelation’, ‘community life’, ‘mission’, and, of course, ‘identity in Christ’ in all its shapes and for different people. Yet, in the same way as for the legitimacy of different interpretations, we are constantly tempted to develop a different plausible way of construing key Pauline concepts as part of a warfare against other interpretations that, in our view, ‘misconceive’ these concepts. There is no need to repeat here the same argument, mutatis mutandis. Once again, understanding Pauline concepts through a hermeneutical process framed by our cultural and religious milieux is not problematic in itself. We cannot avoid it. But, by becoming aware of other plausible ways of conceiving Paul’s concepts, we can recognize that we have made hermeneutical or theological choices, and thus can assume

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responsibility for our choices, by assessing the relative validity of alternative views. These points are best illustrated by an example: a triple exegesis of Rom. 1.1 (in 1.1-7). 3. Three Types of Identity Formation for Paul as Servant of Christ Jesus in Romans (Rom. 1.1-7) Pau=lov dou=lov Xristou= 0Ihsou=, klhto\ v a0po/stolov a0fwrisme/nov ei0v eu0agge/lion qeou= (Rom. 1.1). In Rom. 1.1-7 Paul uses the traditional letter address formula, ‘(From) Paul … to all those in Rome’, but greatly amplifies it in these opening verses. He introduces himself (1.1), expands this self-presentation through a summary of the gospel (1.2-4) and of the goal of his apostleship (1.5-6), then identifies his addressees, the Romans (1.7), whom he describes in terms that parallel his self-presentation. Thus we can ask: how is this relationship between Paul and the Romans constructed? As we consult several commentaries we discover that biblical scholars conceive of the relationship between Paul and the Romans in different ways, which for simplicity’s sake can be viewed as belonging to three families of interpretations: those who envision this relationship as (a) a vertical, topdown, authoritative relationship; (b) a vertical, from-the-ground-up, pastoral relationship; and (c) a horizontal mutual relationship. A first group of interpreters, who perform what I shall call a Theological Exegetical Reading, conceive of the relationship of Paul to the Romans as that of an apostle with the authority to preach and teach the gospel (1.1) to Christians in Rome (1.7) viewed as people who should recognize the authority of Paul and of the gospel he teaches (1.2-4), because of their ‘obedience of faith’ (1.5-6). For these interpreters, Paul seeks to convey an authoritative theological teaching to the Romans; for this purpose, he affirms his own authority and that of his theological message, the gospel. In this type of interpretation, represented by, for example, M.-J. Lagrange, Adolf Schlatter, Franz J. Leenhardt, C. E. B. Cranfield, Peter Stuhlmacher, Joseph Fitzmyer, Douglas Moo (and at times, James Dunn),27 the interpreters put themselves in the position of the original readers. They read Paul with the expectation of receiving an authoritative ‘theological’ teaching from him. For a second group of interpreters, who perform what I shall call a ‘Pastoral Rhetorical Reading’, the relationship between Paul and the Romans is centred on the needs of the Christians in Rome (rather than on Paul and 27. As long as biblical scholars strive to present ‘the’ only legitimate and plausible interpretations of Romans, they feel they have to respond to potential objections from all other scholars. As a consequence, they move back and forth among different ways of reading Romans – for instance, refuting an objection on the basis of another type of interpretation, before returning to their main approach. These scholars are listed here, and below, together with the type of interpretation that is predominant in their work.



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his authoritative teaching). Thus it is envisioned as a ‘pastoral’ relationship between an apostle and minister of the gospel (15.16) and the churches in Rome; Paul is primarily concerned with their needs – and (as becomes clear later) by the tensions between Jewish and Hellenistic (Gentile) Christians. Paul embodies these tensions in his own person as the apostle to the Gentiles (1.5). Furthermore, he presents the Romans as also embodying this tension, by associating them with the Gentiles (1.6), even as he is careful to refer to what they value, namely Jewish scriptures and Jewish understandings of the gospel and of Jesus Christ as Lord (1.3-4). In this type of interpretation, represented by, for example, Krister Stendahl, William S. Campbell, Stanley Stowers, John Gager, (at times, James Dunn), and Robert Jewett, interpreters pay close attention to the ways in which the letter is designed to affect its Roman readers – and thus to the rhetorical features of this discourse. A third group of interpreters, who perform what I call a MessianicApocalyptic Figurative Reading, conceive of the relationship between Paul and the Romans as the reciprocal relationship of members of the body of Christ. This reading takes note of the parallelism between Paul’s self-presentation in 1.1 and his presentation of the Romans in 1.7. While they have distinctive role, respectively as ‘apostle’ and as ‘saints’, both Paul and the Romans are inscribed in the eschatological horizon of the time of the Messiah, Christ Jesus. The letter is thus read as establishing the symbolic world in which Paul and the Romans can view each other as partners with complementary roles (‘apostles’ and ‘saints’) to which they are respectively ‘called’ as members of the body of Christ. In this type of interpretation, often represented by Albert Schweitzer, Ernst Käsemann, J. Christiaan Beker, Daniel Patte, Brendan Byrne, and Douglas A. Campbell, interpreters pay close attention to the ways in which Paul’s letter as a figurative discourse invites its Roman readers to share in its symbolic world by constructing it in terms of religious texts and traditions they value. 4. The Analytical and Textual Choices establishing the Legitimacy of Three Interpretations of Rom. 1.1-7: Some Illustrations 4.1 The theological philological exegesis: Paul as an apostle set apart for the gospel and with an authority that the Romans should recognize; the theological construction of the Paul–Romans relationship This first type of interpretation is set within a particular construct of the historical situation. Paul’s primary concern in Rom. 1.1-7 is to establish from the outset the proper theological framework in which his authority as an apostle should be understood by the Romans. This is necessary because he writes to churches in Rome who do not know him personally and, therefore, know him only through his notoriety as a controversial apostle to the Gentiles. After the controversies regarding his authority as an apostle in Galatia, in Corinth and possibly elsewhere (see Philippians), he knows that many

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negative reports about his ministry circulate among the churches, including those emanating from Jerusalem (15.31). Thus he wants to make sure that the Romans have a proper, first-hand understanding of his ministry and of the gospel he proclaims. This is why he expands the traditional opening formula of the letter by spelling out his qualification as an apostle (1.1) and offering a traditional summary of the gospel (1.2-4). Calvin Roetzel’s succinct comments represent well this first kind of interpretation: Writing to a church that he has neither founded nor visited, Paul was eager to establish the ‘orthodoxy’ of his gospel and the legitimacy of his apostleship. In some quarters Paul was looked upon as a theological maverick, and an interloper (if not a troublemaker) in the apostolic circle. It is quite likely that Paul’s awareness of his notoriety inspired the baroque formulation in Romans 1:1-7 … The message he proclaims [summarized in Rom. 1:2-6] is no dangerous innovation …28

In this interpretation found in many commentaries (e.g., Cranfield, Moo, Dunn, Stuhlmacher, Lagrange, Schlatter, Fitzmyer, Keck, and Johnson),29 the address posits that the purpose of this letter is to resolve potential theological misunderstandings regarding Paul’s ministry and teaching, so as to clear the way for Paul’s visit in Rome (1.10) and to gain support from the Roman churches for his projected missionary activity in Spain (15.24). In the same way that 1.1-7 sets the relationship of Paul as an apostle to the Romans in a proper theological framework, so the rest of the letter is to provide the proper theological view of the gospel that Paul preaches to readers who might have suspicions and misunderstandings about it. In sum, for this reading, the most significant aspect in this letter – ‘the intention of the historical Paul’ – is the theological view it conveys. Paul’s ministry and his relationship to the Romans is that of a ‘prophet’ who authoritatively proclaims to others a message that he has received from God. The first sentence of Moo’s comments on the epistle to the Romans concisely expresses (in an almost caricatural way) the overall view that one has of this document from this perspective: ‘The main body of Romans is a treatise on Paul’s gospel, bracketed by an epistolary opening (1.1-17) and conclusion (15.14–16.27).’30

28. C. J. Roetzel, The Letters of Paul: Conversations in Context (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 3rd edn, 1991), p. 62. 29. C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (ICC, 1; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), pp. 45–48; D. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 40; J. D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8 (Dallas: Word, 1988), p. 5; P. Stuhlmacher, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Commentary (trans. S. J. Hafemann; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), pp. 18–32; M.-J. Lagrange, Saint Paul. Épître aux Romains (Paris: Gabalda, 1931 [1950]), p. 1; A. Schlatter, Romans. The Righteousness of God (trans. S. S. Schatzmann; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), pp. 7–12; J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1993), pp. 227–42; L. Keck, Romans (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2005), pp. 39–40; T. L. Johnson, Reading Romans: A Literary and Theological Commentary (New York: Crossroad, 1997), p. 20. 30. Moo, Romans, p. 39.



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4.2 The pastoral rhetorical exegesis: the pastoral relationship of Paul with the Romans as a rhetorical dynamics According to this second type of interpretation of Rom. 1.1-7, Paul’s primary concern is to establish from the outset the proper rhetorical dynamics between him and the Romans. Without ignoring the theological content of these verses, the focus of the interpretation is reversed. Paul’s primary concern is not selfcentred (aimed at ensuring that his gospel and his authority as an apostle be properly understood), but centred upon the Romans and their needs. Paul’s goal is to meet certain pastoral needs that the Christians in Rome have, as the description of the Romans in 1.6-7 and its amplification in 1.8-15 makes clear. Thus in 15.15-16, as Paul looks back to what he has tried to do throughout this letter, Paul acknowledges that he might have been quite ‘pushy’ as he tried to lead the Romans to change their way of life as churches. But he also insists that it is a part of his role as ‘a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God’ (15.16, NRSV). In sum, from this perspective, in 1.1-7 Paul seeks to establish a pastoral relationship between himself and the Romans, so that he might be in a position to address their needs for pastoral care and direction. This pastoral goal of the entire letter is already apparent in 1.1-7 when one pays attention to the rhetorical features of the letter. According to the rhetoric of Paul’s time, these introductory verses are the exordium. As Robert Jewett notes: ‘The exordium not only introduces the speaker in a manner calculated to appeal to the audience and lend credence to the speaker’s cause, but it also frequently introduces the topics to be addressed in a speech.’31 In agreement with Samuel Byrskog, Jewett further underscores that, as the exordium, 1.1-7 presents ‘Paul’s right and authority to write or speak persuasively to the Romans’,32 as an ambassador presents his credentials in diplomatic rhetoric of the time (as Jewett also notes). Yet the point of 1.1-7 is not simply to establish his authority; it also and primarily ‘draws the Roman believers into Paul’s vocation as an apostle’ (so Jewett), an apostolic ministry that Paul presents as a ‘priestly’ ministry (so Jewett) or more generally as a ‘pastoral’ ministry, rather than as a prophetic ministry.33 4.3 The messianic figurative exegesis: the reciprocal relationship of Paul and the Romans as members of the body of Christ in its eschatological horizon This third type of interpretation of Rom. 1.1-7 emphasizes that anything in Paul’s letters must be read in terms of the ‘figures’ that express the eschatological, messianic horizon through which Paul envisions everything in his present. In Rom. 1.1-7 Paul makes clear that he envisions his relationship

31. Jewett, Romans, p. 96. 32. S. Byrskog, ‘Epistolography, Rhetoric and Letter Prescript: Romans 1.1–7 as a Test Case’, JSNT 65 (1997), pp. 37, 40. 33. Jewett, Romans, p. 97.

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with the Romans within this eschatological horizon by the figures he uses and the structure of this introductory unit. The eschatological character of the most prominent figures in 1.1-7 can readily be recognized. Speaking of Jesus as the ‘Christ’ (1.1, ‘slave of Christ Jesus’) is not, for Paul, using a proper name; it is quietly affirming, from the outset, that Jesus is Messiah, and therefore that Paul and the Romans (and subsequent readers sharing in this vision) live during the messianic age inaugurated by Christ. During this end-time God’s promises are supposed to be fulfilled. Thus the gospel is the fulfilment of the prophets (1.2). The Spirit of God is again manifested among his people (1.4). This is the time of the resurrection of the dead; indeed Christ has been raised from the dead (1.4). This is also the time when Gentiles at last come to God and glorify God; and this process has begun through Paul’s ministry (1.5) from Jerusalem to Illyricum (modern Albania; see 15.19), but also elsewhere, including in Rome (1.6) through the ministry of the ‘saints’ in Rome (1.7-8). When viewed against this eschatological horizon, Paul’s ministry (1.1) and also the Romans’ ministry (1.7-8; 16.1-16) belong together as the shared ministry of ‘apostles’ (1.1; 16.7) and ‘co-workers’ (16.3, 9). The Romans as well as Paul are ‘in Christ’ (16.1-16) or belong to Christ (1.1) the Lord (1.6-7) and as such share a vocation (being ‘called’ 1.1, 6, 7) which requires ‘obedience of faith’ (1.5; 16.26). Indeed, when one pays attention to the figurative structure of this introduction, namely the parallel descriptions of Paul (1.1) and of the saints in Rome (1.7), as well as the parallelism of the introduction (1.1-7) with the conclusion of the letter (16.1-27), it becomes clear that the ministry of the gospel involves a reciprocal relationship, because both Paul and the Romans are ‘in Christ’, and ‘mutually encourage’ (NRSV) and ‘strengthen’ (NJB) each other ‘through each other’s faith’ (1.12). In the eschatological messianic time, there is only one hierarchical relationship that counts, namely the ‘obedience of faith’ (1.6), that is, the submission to Christ as Lord (ku/riov). Paul wants to share with the Romans the grace he has received: apostleship, being set apart for the gospel (1.1-6; 1.15); yet he also acknowledges that they have themselves received a grace, sainthood, to which they have been called (1.7), and a faith-obedience (1.6, 12) that Paul expects them to share with him, so that he might in turn be comforted, encouraged, empowered by them (1.12), as a detailed interpretation of these verses further shows.



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5. The Hermeneutical and Conceptual Choices establishing the Plausibility of Three Interpretations of Rom. 1.1: Some Illustrations 5.1 ‘Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus’ (1.1a), and the construction of Paul’s identity How should Paul’s metaphorical self-designation, ‘a slave of Christ Jesus’,34 be understood? Most significantly, ‘slave of Christ Jesus’ is a technical phrase (as M. Brown underscores).35 It can be unpacked by taking note that it is a metaphorical self-designation; Paul’s relation to Christ is like the relationship of a ‘slave’ to his master. This is a complex concept that can be, and actually is, constructed in very different ways. As with any metaphor, we have to ask a twofold question: which one of the several connotations of ‘slave’ defines what is like the relationship between Paul and Christ; and what other connotations of ‘slaves’ are left aside as inappropriate, because ‘obviously’ they are unlike the relationship between Paul and Christ, and thus not the point of the comparison? There are no definite answers to this double-barrelled question. Actually, we interpreters choose to privilege one connotation over others because of our pre-understanding (what we take to be ‘obvious’) regarding the relationship between Paul and Christ – as well as because of our exegetical choices. We cannot be definite and claim what Paul’s intention actually was. Very learned scholars simply do not agree. Thus, the best we can do as readers of Romans is to account for their divergent readings. Who are we to dismiss any of these learned scholars, even if it is in the name of the newest interpretations that reflect a present-day scholarly consensus? Soon enough this ‘new’ interpretation will be out of date. More importantly, as discussed above, even if we could determine Paul’s intention, the other connotations that Paul evoked through his discourse should not be excluded, because they might still be the most significant for one group or another of Paul’s readers and hearers – among whom, in Paul’s time, were Gentile Christians (1.5-6) and also Jewish Christians in Rome, and possibly elsewhere (including in Jerusalem, mentioned in 15.15-31), as well as readers throughout history. The three primary understandings of this opening metaphoric selfdesignation reflect three major connotations of the term ‘slave’. A ‘slave’ is: • someone who is owned by a master, and thus who is in bondage and totally at the mercy of this master; someone worthless, powerless, in an abject situation, with a shameful status (emphasized by the Apocalyptic Messianic Reading); 34. I will not go here into the textual critical discussion regarding the variant ‘Jesus Christ’ rather than ‘Christ Jesus’ and why if one adopts the theological philological interpretation one might want to prefer the variant. 35. M. J. Brown, ‘Paul’s use of dou=lov Xristou= 0Ihsou= in Romans 1:1’, JBL 120 (4) (2001), pp. 723–37.

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• someone who, although in a low status, is a member of a household as a socio-economic unit, and who, as a servant, acts in the name of his/her master for the sake of the household; someone totally defined by his/her mission in the name of a master (emphasized by the Pastoral Reading); • someone who is unconditionally submitted to the will and authority of a master (emphasized by the Theological Reading). At first, these three connotations may seem so closely related that one might want to say that Paul included all of them in his metaphorical selfdesignation. But it soon appears that making sense of the metaphor ‘Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus’ involves choosing one of these major connotations as primary, bracketing out the other connotations as beside the point. Which connotation to choose is not resolved by the possible allusion to the many uses of the term in the Old Testament. Indeed, the term dou=lov in the LXX, a translation of dbe(,,e is used as a designation for figures as different as Abraham (e.g., Ps. 105.42), Moses (e.g., 2 Kings 18.12; Neh. 9.14; Ps. 105.26), Joshua (Josh. 24.30), Judges (e.g., Samson, Judges 15.18; Samuel, 1 Sam. 3.9-10), Elijah (e.g., 1 Kings 18.36), David (e.g. 1 Sam. 23.10-11; 2 Sam. 3.18; 7.15), the prophets (e.g., Jer. 7.25, 25.4; Ezek. 38.17; Dan. 9.6; Amos 3.7; Zech. 1.6), the ‘servant of Yahweh’ (Isa. 49.1-8); and of the People of God as a whole (e.g., Deut. 32.36) and the worshippers in the Psalms (e.g., Ps. 27.9; 30.17; 116.16; 119.17). One or the other of the connotations for ‘slave’ is perceived as the most appropriate according to which particular Old Testament figures are viewed as corresponding to Paul and to the way in which this correspondence is understood. For the three interpretations, it is striking that ‘Christ Jesus’ assumes the role of God, or Yahweh, in the phrase ‘servant/slave of Yahweh’; Christ Jesus ‘our Lord’ (1.4) shares in the authority of the Lord God. Beyond this core agreement, the interpretations of the correspondence between the Old Testament figures and Paul diverge. This correspondence can be focused: • on these OT figures as ‘instruments’ through whom God acts, with a prophetic function, despite the unworthiness and lack of ability of those persons – a connotation that is further reinforced if one keeps in mind that, for the Romans, the phrase ‘slave of Christ’ would bring to mind the phrase ‘slaves of Caesar’ (first connotation of ‘slave of Christ’; Apocalyptic Messianic Reading, Käsemann, Beker, Jewett, and Brown);36 or • on these OT figures’ willingness to accept a special role given to them by God who has chosen them for a special mission and sends them to speak and act in God’s name (second connotation of ‘slave of Christ’; Pastoral Reading, Stuhlmacher, Dunn, Byrne, and Toews);37 or again 36. Käsemann, Romans, p. 6; J. C. Beker, Paul’s Apocalyptic Gospel: The Coming Triumph of God (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1982), pp. 115–16; Jewett, Romans, p. 100; Brown, ‘Paul’s Use’, p. 733. 37. Stuhlmacher, Romans, pp. 18–19; Dunn, Romans, I.7–8; Byrne, Romans, p. 38; J. E. Toews, Romans (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2004), p. 38.



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• on these OT figures’ total, humble submission to God’s will (third connotation of ‘slave of Christ’; Theological Reading, Lagrange, Schlatter, Cranfield, Leenhardt, Barrett, Fitzmyer, and Moo).38 It is to be noted that according to which understanding of Paul’s metaphorical self-designation one chooses, one also chooses to emphasize certain connotations of ‘Christ Jesus’: • Christ’s power upon the ‘slave’ (according to the first view of slave chosen in the Apocalyptic Messianic Reading); • Christ’s mission which the ‘slave’ prolongs in the name of the Lord (according to the second view of slave chosen in the Pastoral Reading); • Christ’s authority to which the ‘slave’ voluntarily submits (according to the third view of slave chosen in the Theological Reading). 5.2 ‘An apostle called [and] set apart for the gospel of God:39 further construction of Paul’s identity This second part of 1.1 involves three central concepts for which we find diverging interpretations: the ‘call’ of Paul (further described as a ‘setting apart’); ‘apostle’; ‘gospel of God’. The ‘call’ and ‘setting apart’ of Paul The adjective ‘called’ (klhto/v) has the sense of a perfect passive participle, and therefore most commentators read it as a divine passive: Paul has been ‘called by God’. For Paul, the Roman Christians (1.6, 7) and more generally all Christian believers (8.28, see also 1 Cor. 1.1, 2, 24) have also received a ‘divine calling’.40 The actual perfect passive participle ‘set apart’ (a0fwrisme/nov) is similarly read as a divine passive. Whether or not this term alludes to God’s setting apart Israel as his people (Lev. 20.26) or the Levites for a priestly ministry (Num. 8.14), or again if it plays on the possible meaning of ‘Pharisee’ (someone ‘separated’, see Phil. 3.5),41 this divine calling or setting apart can be understood in three ways, according to whether one puts the emphasis:

38. Lagrange, St Paul, p. 2; Schlatter, Romans, p. 7; Cranfield, Romans, I.50–51; Leenhardt, Romans, p. 21; C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), pp. 15–16; Fitzmyer, Romans, pp. 228–29; and Moo, Romans, pp. 40–41. 39. Jewett’s elegant translation of 1.1b-c (klhto\v a0po/stolov a0fwrisme/nov ei0v eu0agge/lion qeou=) making clear the relationship between 1.1b and 1.1c. NRSV: ‘called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God’. 40. Barrett, Romans, p. 16. 41. An alternative mentioned by several commentators, see for example Fitzmyer, Romans, p. 232; Jewett, Romans, ad loc.

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• on the origin of the call and setting apart, namely, God, and the significance and necessity of God’s intervention in the present of the recipient (Apocalyptic Messianic Reading); • on the effect of the call and setting apart upon the recipient(s), Paul (1.1) or the Romans (who are called, 1.6, 7); through this call and setting apart Paul gains a special status as ‘personally related to God’ and, therefore, is invested with a special authority (Theological Reading); • on the vocation, that is, the task for which one is called, set apart; the call as entrusting the recipient with a specific task: ‘apostleship’ for Paul, ‘sainthood’ for the Romans (1.6-7); Paul is set apart ‘for the gospel’. Then 1.1b must be read with 1.1c, as translated by Jewett: ‘an apostle called [and] set apart for God’s gospel” (my emphasis)42 (Pastoral Reading). Apostle ‘Apostle’ (a0po/stolov) is part of a cluster of terms that refers to someone who is sent on behalf of someone else: in the political sphere, someone sent as an ambassador; in the religious sphere, someone (e.g., philosophers) sent by the gods. In the LXX, this is a frequent language that applies to different persons sent on behalf of others or of God. In Isaiah 6.8 this language refers to the one who goes on behalf of the Lord and proclaims the prophetic message. For most scholars the distinctive use of ‘apostle’ in early Christianity reflects the LXX usage, and refers to ‘one who, through a vision of the risen Lord, has become an official witness to his resurrection and who has been commissioned by him to preach the gospel in a way fundamental to its spread’.43 But beyond this consensus, ‘apostle’ can be read with three different emphases. • A Pastoral Reading understands it as specifying the ‘vocation’ of Paul as ‘apostleship’, focusing on the purposes and goals of apostleship by underscoring, with 1.1c that it is ‘for the gospel of God’. • A Theological Reading emphasizes ‘apostle’ as a title signalling Paul’s authority; his authority is derived from the origin of his apostleship: God who sends him, and who gave him the message he proclaims. • An Apocalyptic Messianic Reading emphasizes the ways in which the one who is sent is qualified – empowered, equipped – to be an instrument of God because of God’s intervention in this person’s life; its focus is on the transformation of Paul resulting from God’s intervention. Gospel of God The phrase ‘gospel of God’ (eu0agge/lion qeou=, also in 15.16) is understood in three radically different ways according to how one constructs the genitive. With Schlatter, Fitzmyer and Moo we have to ask three questions.44 42. 43. JBL 105 44. 42–43.

Jewett, Romans, p. 95. See F. H. Agnew, ‘The Origin of the NT Apostle-Concept: A Review of Research’, (1986), pp. 75–96, esp. 77. Schlatter, Romans, pp. 7–8; Fitzmyer, Romans, pp. 232–33; Moo, Romans, pp.



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First, is the ‘gospel’ a message ‘about God’ (objective genitive) – when one envisions ‘gospel’ in terms of its message-content (e.g., with Cranfield, Leenhardt, Barrett, Stuhlmacher, and also, ultimately, Moo)?45 The Theological Reading chooses to emphasize this understanding of ‘gospel of God’, as it conceives of the ‘gospel’ as a theological, doctrinal message about God and about what God has done and revealed in Christ (1.2-5). Or, second, is the gospel ‘from God’ (genitive of origin) – when one envisions ‘gospel’ primarily in terms of its origin, as a further specification of Paul’s vocation as apostle (e.g., with Fitzmyer, Dunn, and Jewett)?46 The Pastoral Reading chooses to emphasize this second understanding, because it also underscores that the phrase ‘gospel from God’ makes it clear that the gospel is from the God of Israel. Thus, far from being a radically new message about God (a doctrinal statement), this phrase already reflects Paul’s pastoral concern regarding the conflict between Jewish and Gentile Christians (see Jewett [on 1.1] following Moxnes).47 This phrase affirms the continuity of the gospel with the revelation of the (Hebrew) holy scriptures (as 1.2 confirms). Or, third, is the gospel ‘God’s gospel’, that is the ‘gospel (spoken) by God’ (subjective genitive) – when God is ‘the one who speaks through the message’?48 The Apocalyptic Messianic Reading chooses this third understanding according to which the proclamation (gospel) is an action of God (e.g., with Schlatter, and Käsemann).49 God’s gospel is a performative word through which God affects those to whom it is addressed. It is a manifestation of God’s power (as Paul makes explicit in 1.16: ‘… the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith …’ NRSV). Thus, for this reading, which continues to pay attention to all the textual expressions pointing to God’s active role in the messianic time inaugurated by Christ, the gospel is an intervention of God in Paul’s and the Romans’ experience (as emphasized by Käsemann).50 Actually, by choosing to emphasize one or the other alternative (even when they claim that this is a general genitive encompassing the three alternatives, Cranfield, Moo, and Keck actually give priority to one or the other), scholars show that the phrase eu0agge/lion qeou= carries each of these connotations, and that it makes a difference which alternative is selected as the most significant.

45. Cranfield, Romans, p. 52; Leenhardt, Romans, p. 21; Barrett, Romans, p. 16; Stuhlmacher, Romans, p. 19; Moo, Romans, pp. 42–43. 46. Fitzmyer, Romans, pp. 232–33; Dunn, Romans, I.10; and Jewett, Romans, p. 102. 47. H. Moxnes, Theology in Conflict: Studies in Paul’s Understanding of God in Romans (Leiden: Brill, 1980), p. 288; Jewett, Romans, p. 102. 48. Schlatter, Romans, p. 8. 49. Käsemann, Romans, pp. 6–10. 50. Ibid.

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The brief example above illustrates that three interpretations of Rom. 1.1 can be shown to be equally legitimate and plausible. Each represents a set of interpretive choices that are properly grounded in the text (and thus each is legitimate) and each presents a coherent, meaningful understanding of what Paul says through his rich language (and thus each is plausible). I know colleagues – including William S. Campbell – would want to say that at least the theological philological interpretation is neither legitimate nor plausible and that the apocalyptic messianic figurative interpretation is dubious. My concern with this autocratic claim according to which only one interpretation is legitimate and plausible is, as pointed out above, that it makes the promoted interpretation illegitimate and indeed also implausible. Instead, one should acknowledge the legitimacy and plausibility of other interpretations, taking them seriously and respecting the scholarship of their proponents. Then, one can investigate why we are so passionately opposed to other interpretations, namely because we put into question its validity. Joining William Campbell I want vehemently to reject the theological philological interpretation as ‘invalid’ (lacking value), indeed as a very dangerous interpretation because of the supersessionism and anti-Judaism it promotes. Indeed, this is the ground upon which we choose a certain interpretation over others; not so much because we cannot see other significant aspects of a text or because we cannot make sense of other kinds of hermeneutical and theological concepts, but because we ‘feel’ the moral validity of one choice of interpretation over another. This does not mean that we can trust our feeling. Carefully assessing, through an ethical evaluation, the validity or the lack of validity of each interpretation in actual life-contexts is part of the critical task of a biblical scholar. Opening the possibility of such an ethical assessment requires from each of us to acknowledge that other biblical scolars have laid out alternate legitimate and plausible interpretations of each given biblical text, and thus that we must assume ethical responsibility for our choice of a particular interpretation.

Chapter 13

The Juridical, the Participatory and the ‘New Perspective’ on Paul Terence L. Donaldson 1. Introduction1 Thirty some years ago, while working towards one of my doctoral comprehensives at the Toronto School of Theology, I read a book that both totally reshaped the way I understood Paul, and at the same time gave clear expression to a reconstruction of Paul’s thought towards which I had already been groping in a tentative way. The book was Paul and Palestinian Judaism, by E. P. Sanders, who at that time was teaching just down the road at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. My experience with Sanders was by no means unique; in fact, it was a miniature version of his impact on Pauline scholarship as a whole. His work has precipitated a radical shift in the way Paul’s thought is being configured, both in its internal elements and in its relationship to Paul’s native Jewish world; at the same time it represents a clear and comprehensive articulation of insights and formulations that had been developing in a more piecemeal fashion through much of the twentieth century. The shift to which I refer has to do in part with Paul’s juridical language – i.e., his language of justification by faith – and its polemical counterpart, 1. I am delighted for this opportunity to pay tribute to William S. Campbell. I first encountered his work when my research for what became Paul and the Gentiles (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997) was in its formative stages. I quickly recognized him as a fellow traveller, someone who was asking similar questions and moving along similar paths. In the intervening years, as I have continued to benefit from his work, I have also enjoyed our faceto-face conversations and the warm collegial relationship that has developed. This chapter, which originated as a lecture that I have given on several occasions, still bears some of the signs of its origins. Since I offer it here to Bill as a continuation of our conversation, I have chosen to maintain some of the conversational tone and not to weigh it down with extensive scholarly footnotes. I have drawn on some of the material here for a response to a seminar paper, which will appear as ‘The “Plain Meaning” of Romans 3:28, 4:5, and the Place of Paul’s Juridical Language: A Response to Carsten Claussen’, in C. Grenholm and D. Patte (eds), Modern Interpretations in Romans (Romans through History and Cultures series; London: T&T Clark, forthcoming). I am grateful to the editors for granting me permission to use the material here.

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justification by works. This shift, which James Dunn has dubbed the ‘new perspective on Paul’, involves both content and structure. Specifically, it involves a shift in our understanding (1) of what Paul meant by dikaiosu&nh and other words in his vocabulary of justification or righteousness, and (2) of the place of these juridical terms in the structure of Paul’s theology. In other words, Sanders’ work has precipitated a shift in the paradigm for reading Paul that has been dominant since the Reformation. While he has certainly not spoken the final word – and I will be suggesting some reconfiguration a little later – the impact of his work has been profound and far-reaching. What I want to do in this chapter is to look at this shift, with particular attention to the place of Paul’s juridical language – righteousness, justification, etc. – in the structure of his thought. I will begin with the Reformation reading of Paul, specifically with the question of the relationship between justification and what has traditionally been termed ‘sanctification’ (or ‘regeneration’). What will emerge eventually is that the question has to do instead with the relationship between two complexes within Paul’s rhetoric of salvation – what I call his ‘change of status’ metaphors on one hand, and his language of ‘participation in Christ’ on the other. 2. Justification and Sanctification in Traditional Perspective I begin, however, with the categories of justification and sanctification as they have been traditionally construed. For present purposes two aspects of the traditional construal are of immediate importance, though others will be drawn in as we proceed. One has to do with justification, and the particular spin put on the concept when its essential definition is found in the contrast between faith and works. Traditional Reformation interpretation has viewed faith and works as fundamental theological categories for Paul, understanding them as referring to two mutually exclusive human attitudes or dispositions towards God. ‘Works’ refer in the first instance to moral and religious deeds that are performed in order to earn favour and acceptance (i.e., justification) with God. Such activity, it has been assumed, inevitably gives rise to an attitude of religious self-confidence or meritorious entitlement, based on one’s own achievement. In this understanding of Paul, the desire to earn justification on the basis of works, and the self-confident attitude that this desire inevitably produces, is seen as a general human tendency. If Paul refers most often to ‘works of the law’ and if his examples all have to do with the Law of Moses, this is simply the result of circumstances. The Jewish version of worksrighteousness was both the one with which he was most familiar and the one that was the immediate cause of the troubles in his churches. Underlying both, however, is a more fundamental human tendency and problem; all human beings are tempted to place their confidence in their own moral achievement and religious endeavour. Justification by faith, then, receives its particular spin by being set over against this concept of works; justification by faith is a status freely granted by the grace of God as a gift, made possible by the atoning



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work of Christ. In this reading of Paul, his juridical language is understood to operate within the framework of two mutually exclusive religious systems – one based on divine grace humbly received by faith, the other on human achievement considered as grounds for boastful self-reliance. The second aspect of the traditional construal that I want to mention here has to do with the way justification was linked with sanctification. The latter term was used in Reformation discourse to refer to the whole process by which a believer was transformed into the image of Christ and enabled to live in a manner pleasing to God. It thus had to do not with objective status but with actual subjective experience. Sensitive to charges that their position on justification by faith made the Christian life too easy or even that it encouraged moral laxity, the Reformers argued strenuously that justification and sanctification were a package deal, that you could not have one without the other, that they were inextricably tied together.2 But tied together in a particular way. Since sanctification had to do with personal transformation, with the living of a Christ-like life, and thus with the performance of what could be described as ‘good works’, sanctification had to be worked into the structure in a carefully circumscribed way. Otherwise, there was the danger that ‘justification by works’ would be smuggled in by the back door. And so the relationship between justification and sanctification had to be construed in such a way that there was no danger that justification might be made dependent in any way on a subjective transformation of the believer. This was accomplished by means of two strategic moves. First, sanctification was treated as a second and subsequent stage in the process of salvation. Second, the indissoluble link between the two was located in God alone, rather than in any structural connection in the experience of salvation. On this second point Calvin uses the analogy of the sun, which provides both heat to warm the earth and light to illuminate it. But the two are distinct operations, not to be confused: ‘If the brightness of the sun cannot be separated from its heat, are we therefore to say that the earth is warmed by light and illumined by heat?’ Of course not, says Calvin; in this dual activity of the sun we certainly have ‘a mutual and undivided connection, and yet reason itself prohibits us from transferring the peculiar properties of the one to the other’ (Institutes 3.11.6). Likewise with God’s activity in justification and sanctification: the God who freely bestows righteousness on those with faith also sends the Spirit to carry out the work of sanctification. But the two are different operations, with sanctification a second and subsequent step unconnected with the first, except that the same God is the agent in both. A similar sequencing of justification and sanctification can be found in Luther’s commentary on Romans, an epistle whose structure might seem to lend support to the idea (though I think this is a misreading of Romans).   2. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. H. Beveridge; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1957), 3.11.6: ‘As Christ cannot be divided into parts, so the two things, justification and sanctification, which we perceive to be united together in him, are inseparable. Whomsoever, therefore, God receives into his favour, he presents with the Spirit of adoption, whose agency forms them anew into his image.’

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So much for the traditional reading of these aspects of Paul’s thought. Let us turn now to the revolution precipitated by Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Sanders’ accomplishment is twofold, corresponding to the two elements in his title. First, Palestinian Judaism. Jewish scholars have always objected strenuously to the depiction of Judaism as a legalistic religion of ‘works-righteousness’, where one’s standing with God was earned through meritorious achievement. Scholars such as Claude Montefiore and Solomon Schechter argued early in the twentieth century that such conceptions were simply wrong, and that if this was what Paul was saying, then Paul had misunderstood or misrepresented Judaism. Torah-centred religion, they argued, was not the categorical opposite of grace; Israel’s story was a story of divine grace from beginning to end. The purpose of the Torah was to provide Israel not with an opportunity to earn a relationship with God, but rather with a way of responding to the divine grace already demonstrated in calling Abraham and Sarah, choosing Israel as a special people, liberating them from Egypt, and so on.3 This insight had been picked up earlier by Christian scholars sympathetic to Judaism, such as James Parkes and George Foot Moore. But it was Sanders’ special achievement not only to demonstrate it in an incontrovertible way but to do so with such vigour and brash conviction that scholars could no longer talk about Paul and Judaism without taking it as a fixed reference point. What emerges from all the literature of the Second Temple period, he demonstrates in the exhaustive survey that comprises the first 400 pages of his book, is a religion not of legalism but of what he terms ‘covenantal nomism’. In this system of religion, the law is important; hence ‘nomism’. But it functions within the covenantal relationship, a relationship established and maintained by divine grace. The Torah serves both to clearly identify Israel as specially chosen by God for the task of reflecting God’s character among the nations, and to provide the means by which Israelites can affirm and maintain their place in the covenant people. Did Paul, then, misunderstand Judaism? Was the faith/works contrast, so central to his language of justification by faith, based on a fundamental misperception of how the law functioned for a pious Jew? This brings us to Sanders’ second contribution, having to do with Paul himself. Here too he is building on the insights of earlier scholars, particularly William Wrede and Albert Schweitzer in the early years of the twentieth century.4 Wrede and Schweitzer observed a curious thing about Paul’s justification by faith language. For a concept that was seen by many to be the heart and centre of Paul’s thought, it played a surprisingly restricted role in his letters 3. See especially C. Montefiore, Judaism and St. Paul: Two Essays (London: M. Goschen, 1914). 4. W. Wrede, Paul (trans. E. Lummis; Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1908); A. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (trans. W. Montgomery; New York: Seabury, 1968 [1931]).



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as a whole. The terms are heavily concentrated in Romans, Galatians, and Philippians 3 (almost 90 per cent). As a result, it can readily be argued that Paul uses these terms only in a very specific context and for a very particular purpose. The context has to do with the status of Gentile Christians,5 and in particular whether male Gentiles need to be circumcised and observe other specific requirements of the Torah in order to be admitted into the church. The rhetorical purpose of this language of justification by faith/works, consequently, is the very specific one of defending the equal status of Gentiles in the body of Christ. The significance of this observation emerges clearly when we place it in the context of Paul’s letters as a whole. First, the only kind of ‘works’ that Paul ever objects to are those things that identify Jews as Jews, and therefore the things that Gentiles need to do in order to become Jews. At the top of this list of things, of course, is circumcision; but food laws, Sabbath observance, and other boundary-marking elements are implicated as well. Elsewhere, however, Paul can use the language of ‘works’ and of ‘boasting’ quite freely and happily of himself and other Christians (works: 1 Cor. 3.11-15; 2 Cor. 9.8; Gal. 6.4; 1 Thess. 1.3; cf. Col. 1.10; boasting: Rom. 5.3; 15.17; 2 Cor. 9.2-3; 10.15-17; 11.16–12.10). Further, in almost every letter he gives his congregation instructions on various things they are to do – from contributing to the collection project, to showing hospitality, to refraining from activity that might cause offence to a fellow believer. But in neither case – neither these injunctions nor his use of the language of ‘works’ or of ‘boasting’ – do we ever find him adding any cautionary statement about the danger of supposing that one was thereby earning God’s acceptance on the basis of works. The only works that he warns against are those that turn Gentiles into Jews. The second observation to be made about the restricted role of justification by faith in Paul’s letters as a whole has to do with its limited place in his theological argumentation. Apart from the particular context just mentioned, he does not refer back to the concept or use it as a fundamental reference point for dealing with any of the various theological and pastoral issues that his letters attempt to address. Schweitzer noticed this particularly with reference to the charge of antinomianism in Romans 6. Here Paul responds to the charge that ‘justification by faith not works’ leads to a lack of concern for an ethical style of life: ‘shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?’ is his provocative paraphrase of the accusation. Schweitzer pointed out that in his response to the charge Paul does not refer to justification by faith at all. Indeed, ‘there is no logical route from the righteousness by faith to a theory of ethics’.6 Rather, Paul grounds his response in a different theological concept – dying and rising with Christ – one to which we will return in a moment. For present purposes the point is that what Schweitzer observed about Romans 6 is true of Paul’s theological argumentation generally. In dealing with the various ethical 5. Paul, of course, did not use the term ‘Christian’, and it may be anachronistic to use it in connection with him. I use it here simply for convenience, in absence of any really suitable alternative. 6. Schweitzer, Mysticism, p. 225.

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or community problems that plagued the church in Corinth, or the concern about the parousia in Thessalonica, and so on, Paul never takes his readers back to the idea of justification by faith as a theological first principle which can be brought to bear on other issues of Christian existence. It does not seem to function for him as a fundamental reference point. If we come to Paul with the assumption that justification by faith represented the starting point of his message and the centre of his theology, this is quite startling. Returning to Sanders, then, he builds on these earlier observations of Wrede and Schweitzer, agreeing with them that for Paul justification by faith is a limited theological formulation, used in a very specific context having to do with his Gentile mission.7 ‘Faith’ and ‘works’ function as Paul’s rhetorical shorthand for two different views about what entrance requirements need to be met by Gentiles (and Jews as well) for membership in the body of Christ. Paul’s rejection of ‘works’ is not a rejection of meritorious achievement per se (though he would have rejected any such notion had it been put to him); rather it is a rejection of the position that the Torah-based boundary markers that identified Jews as Jews were to be imposed on Gentiles as conditions of membership. At bottom, the faith/works contrast is fundamentally a Christ/Torah contrast. Justification by faith is a particular rhetorical strategy, deployed in the service of the more fundamental conviction that Gentiles do not have to become Jews in order to be ‘in Christ’. Now, Jewish scholars such as Montefiore and Schechter, or their modern counterparts, might well want to continue the dialogue by pointing out that this does not at all explain why Paul placed Christ and Torah in this mutually exclusive situation. Why should Paul have seen Christ and Torah as in some way antithetical when other Jewish Christians – James of Jerusalem, for example – were able to combine them more smoothly? This is a question to which Sanders gives no satisfactory answer. Nevertheless one result of his work has been to put Christian–Jewish dialogue concerning Paul on a more solid footing, allowing for real engagement rather than each simply talking past the other. For present purposes, however, we are pursuing a different question, having to do with the relative place of justification and sanctification in the taxonomy of Paul’s language of salvation. Here we need to pick up another major element of Sanders’ work. If justification by faith is not the organizing centre and starting point of Paul’s language of salvation, what is? Here, once again, Sanders makes a major contribution; and here once again he builds on the pioneering work of Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer drew attention to a pervasive element in Paul’s thought that he called Christ-mysticism, but that Sanders terms, more appropriately, ‘eschatological participation’. What they are referring to with these terms is that complex of themes and images that describe the human experience of salvation as a participation with Christ in his experience of dying to this age and rising to the life of the age to come. In more detail, this pattern can be described as follows. 7.

Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p. 492.



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1. Paul frequently describes the Christian experience as one of being united with Christ in a corporate entity. His most common term for this is ‘in Christ’. Paul can use this term with a grand, even a cosmic, resonance: ’If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation’ (2 Cor. 5.17); ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3.28). In other places he uses the term as a way of talking about much more mundane realities: Andronicus and Junia ‘are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before me’ – that is, they became believers before Paul did. In addition to the phrase ‘in Christ’, other terms appear with more or less the same meaning: ‘with Christ’ (Gal. 2.19); ‘in the Spirit’ (Rom. 8.9-11); the ‘body of Christ’ (Rom. 12.4-5; 1 Cor. 12.27); ‘members of Christ’ (1 Cor. 6.15); ‘putting on Christ’ (Gal. 3.27); a ‘new humanity’ (Col. 3.9-10, if Colossians reflects Pauline usage; cf. Rom. 6.6). 2. These terms often have negative counterparts, so that together they describe two human solidarities or two domains in which life can be lived – one under the power of sin, the other empowered by the Spirit. Over against the ‘in Christ’ reality Paul sets life ‘in Adam’: ‘For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ’ (1 Cor. 15.22). Existence ‘in the Spirit’ is set in contrast with existence ‘in the flesh’: ‘But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him’ (Rom. 8.9). The ‘new humanity’ has its negative counterpart in the ‘old humanity’: ‘Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old humanity with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new humanity’ (Col. 3.9-10); ‘We know that our old humanity was crucified with Christ’ (Rom. 6.6). Rom. 6.6 continues by speaking of the ‘body of sin’ (‘so that the body of sin might be destroyed’), a phrase that might be understood corporately – that is, of the old humanity as a whole – and thus as a counterpart to the ‘body of Christ’. 3. The passage from one sphere to the other is initiated by faith and effected by means of the believer’s participation in Christ’s sufferings, death and resurrection. ‘I have been crucified with Christ’, Paul says in Gal. 2.19-20, ‘and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.’ This union with Christ in his death is linked with baptism, ‘Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life’ (Rom. 6.3-4). Or in Galatians: ‘As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ’ (Gal. 3.27; cf. Col. 2.11-12). It is also linked with the ‘Lord’s supper’: ‘The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a sharing (koinwni/a) in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?’ (1 Cor. 10.16). 4. Finally, this transition is eschatological in nature, a transition with Christ from this age to the age to come. This is at least explicit in the

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This description of Paul’s participatory language is my own, but it corresponds in substance to that of Sanders. While I do not have time here to review the argument in any detail, Sanders’ conclusion – persuasive in my view – is that ‘the participationist language brings us closer than the juristic to the heart of Paul’s thought and reveals the depth of it’.8 The argument is based at least in part on the pervasiveness of this language in Paul’s letters and the fact that he does use ‘being in Christ’ as a fundamental first principle for theological and ethical issues (e.g., Rom. 6.1-8; 1 Cor. 6.15). In other words, if we are looking for the centre and starting point of Paul’s thinking about Christian existence we should turn to his language of ‘being in Christ by faith’ rather than of ‘justification by faith’. One can still ask, however, about the nature of the relationship between the participatory and the juridical in Paul. Here, I do not think that Sanders has provided us with the final answer, and I want to make some suggestions in this area in the final section of this chapter. Before turning to this, however, I need to make one further observation. This language of being in Christ, dying and rising with Christ, and so on, is Paul’s preferred way of describing the process by which a believer is liberated from sin, transformed into the likeness of Christ, made fit for the age to come, and so on. In other words, it describes that process that has been traditionally labelled sanctification. The older question of the relationship of sanctification to justification, then, is more 8. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p. 520. To be sure, in his subsequent work Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadephia, PA: Fortress Press, 1983) he backs away from this statement by making a distinction ‘between the center of his thought and the central terminology by which he discusses the transfer from the unsaved to the saved state’. He continues: Both Beker and Hans Hübner have attributed to me the view that “participation in Christ” is the center of Paul’s thought, despite my effort to make it clear, in discussing “dying with Christ” and “righteousness by faith,” that I was discussing only the terminology which is most revealing for understanding Paul’s conception of how one enters the body of Christ. (p. 5) But given the sentence quoted above, together with the general tenor of the argument in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, Beker, Hübner and others can well be forgiven for thinking that Sanders was making a more fundamental statement about the shape of Paul’s thought.



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properly put as the question of the relationship between the participatory and the juridical in Paul. 4. Change-of-Status Metaphors and Participatory Language I want to begin with Schweitzer, whose reconstruction of Paul represents the most pronounced subordination of justification to participation. In a now-famous phrase, he describes justification by faith as a ‘subsidiary crater, which has formed within the rim of the main crater – the mystical doctrine of redemption through the being-in-Christ’;9 alternatively, it is ‘a fragment from the more comprehensive mystical redemption-doctrine, which Paul has broken off and polished to give him the particular refraction which he requires’10 (i.e., to defend his Gentile mission). What Schweitzer does not take sufficiently into account, however, is that there are other metaphors in Paul that function in a manner similar to that of justification, but are found throughout Paul’s letters. That is, unlike justification they are not restricted to Romans and Galatians; consequently, when they are taken together, they represent a more significant component of Paul’s thought, not simply a ‘fragment’ or a ‘subsidiary crater’. What I have in mind here are such terms as reconciliation, redemption, adoption and so on; terms that likewise describe the new status that a believer enjoys in Christ or the process of transition from one to the other. Looking at this in a little more detail, I suggest that we can identify at least five different clusters of metaphors by which Paul describes the old and new status of those who have come to be in Christ. The metaphor clusters overlap to a certain extent and blend into one another, but it is nevertheless helpful to list them separately. One of these, of course, is the juridical language of the law-court or covenant law-suit. The negative side of the metaphorical cluster is signalled by the verb katakri/nein (to condemn) and the related nouns kata&krima (judicial penalty), kata&krisiv (condemnation) and kri/ma (judgement). Set over against this on the positive side of the status duality are the verb dikaiou~n (to justify), the nouns dikaiosu&nh (righteousness), dikai/wsiv (justification) and dikai/wma (righteous deed), and the adjective di/kaiov (righteous). A second cluster of metaphors has to do with personal relationships. Here the negative status is conveyed by nouns such as o)rgh& (wrath), e0xqro& v (enemy) and e !xqra (enmity). The positive status and the process of transition are conveyed by nouns such as katallagh& (reconciliation), and verbs such as katalla&ssein (to reconcile) and ei0rhnhpoiei ~n (to make peace). Third in the list is a set of terms drawn from the temple and the related issue of purity. While the negative side of the cluster is limited (a)kaqarsi/a), the positive side is more richly populated: kaqari/zein (to cleanse), a)polou&ein 9. Mysticism, p. 225. 10. Ibid., p. 220.

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(to wash, purify), a(gia&zein (to sanctify), a(giasmo& v (sanctification), a(giwsu&nh (holiness), a#giov (holy) and so on. A similar overbalance on the positive side is found with a set of terms relating to the marketplace. On one side we find pipra&skein (to sell); on the other a)gora&zein (to buy), e0cagora&zein (to redeem), a)polu&trwsiv (redemption) and timh& (price). Finally, there is a set of terms relating to slavery, adoption and sonship. The negative side of this status duality is denoted by doulou~n (to enslave), douleu&ein (to serve as a slave), doulei&a (slavery), dou~lov (slave) and so on. The positive side is expressed by words such as e0leuqerou~n (to liberate, set free), e0leuqeri/a (freedom), ui9oqesi/a (adoption) and ui9o& v (son), along with klhronomei ~n (to inherit), klhronomi/a (inheritance) and klhrono&mov (heir). Of course, this is a highly compressed presentation of material that could be explored at great length. However, the points I wish to make are readily apparent, I believe, and thus not in need of elaborate demonstration. Paul’s juridical language is just one of several sets of metaphors by which he describes a believer’s change of status, and these metaphors are liberally strewn throughout his theological discourse and are not restricted to just one rhetorical purpose. Sanders’ work represents an advance over Schweitzer in that he does take some of these elements into account. The categories he uses, however, serve to obscure and confuse rather than to clarify. Sanders makes a distinction in Paul’s language of salvation between the state of Christian existence, which he sees as expressed in a variety of ways, and what he calls transfer terms, terms describing the transfer of the believer from the old state of sin to the new one in Christ. Justification (or, in his neologism, the state of having been ‘righteoused’) is one of these transfer terms, as is reconciliation, sanctification, cleansing and participation in Christ’s death. Curiously, participatory language shows up on both lists – both as a transfer term and as a description of the new state.11 Old state Transfer terms • under sin • faith • in sin • righteoused • under law • reconciled • sinners • washed • enemies • sanctified • death • Christ’s death as • condemned • cleansing • unrighteous • participation in Christ’s death

New state • • • • • • • • • •

righteous life in spirit spirit of life in Christ righteoused sons of Abraham sons of God Christ’s righteousness from God

I agree with Sanders that we need to recognize the presence of different categories in Paul’s language of salvation. But his categories – ‘new state 11.

For the following list, see Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, p. 7.



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of existence in Christ’ on one hand, and ‘transfer to this new state’ on the other – do not serve to bring the basic structures of Paul’s thought into focus. For on one hand, what Sanders calls terms such as justification describe not only a transfer from one state of existence to another, but also the new state itself; in Christ one is justified, reconciled and so on. And on the other hand, Paul’s description of the Christian’s new state of existence contains both a set of terms referring to the new status enjoyed by the believer (i.e., justified, reconciled, etc.) and language more descriptive of an ongoing experienced process (i.e., the language of participation in Christ). I suggest, then, that Paul’s language of salvation can be understood with reference to two more fundamental categories, which I think it would be much more constructive to differentiate. On one hand, there are terms descriptive of the believer’s status in Christ – terms such as justified, reconciled, sanctified, redeemed, adopted – which describe the new objective status that a believer has vis-à-vis God. On the other hand are terms that refer more to the actual experience of transformation – terms such as being in Christ, participation in Christ’s death, dying and rising with Christ, new creation and so on – which describe the believer’s subjective experience of the process of salvation. One of the benefits of this categorization is that the same two categories also apply to the old solidarity of life ‘in Adam’; here one can also speak of a status (e.g., sin as wrongdoing leading to guilt; death as a penalty) and of an experienced reality (e.g., sin as a power holding humankind under its sway; death as a power operating in conjunction with sin). In both cases, it is possible to think of a transfer from one to another – a shift from an old status to a new, or a shift from life under the power of sin to life in Christ. But the transfer can be looked at from two different perspectives – that of objective status and that of subjective experienced process – and it just confuses the issue to mix the two in the way Sanders does. Thus in place of Sanders’ categories of state and transfer, I propose instead those of status and experienced process. I think it is truer to the structure of Paul’s language of salvation to speak of a distinction between a believer’s status, an objective category expressed by means of a variety of ‘change-ofstatus’ metaphors, and an experienced process, a subjective category having to do with a believer’s participation with Christ in a process of dying to this age and being transformed for life in the age to come. Now, finally, we can take up the question of the relationship between these two categories in the structure of Paul’s thought. In traditional Reformation perspective, justification is seen as both primary and independent; that is, it is the first stage in the process of salvation and it is in no way dependent on any subsequent stage. In my reading of Paul, however, it is the participatory language that gives expression to his fundamental pattern of salvation. The change-of-status metaphors describe the status of those who are engaged in the process of dying and rising with Christ, but the status arises from the process and is dependent on it, rather than the other way around. This conclusion is based on two aspects of Paul’s thinking, which I can mention here only briefly.

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The first has to do with the place of sin in Paul’s thought and thus with what in theological terms has been referred to as the atonement. For justification to be Paul’s primary soteriological category, the major problem posed by sin would need to be guilt and the need for forgiveness. But I believe that the problem of sin for Paul is fundamentally one of bondage to a power and not simply one of being liable to a verdict of guilt and condemnation. Note how in Rom. 5.12-21 sin is described in quasi-personal terms as something that ‘entered’, ‘exercised dominion’ and so on. Note also how in Romans 7 Paul twice states that behind the phenomenon of sin as an act of wrongdoing is the phenomenon of sin as a coercive power: ‘But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me’ (v. 17; also 20). What is needed primarily is not simply a new status – justification rather than guilt. Instead, what is needed is liberation. This is what Christ has provided, in Paul’s view. By defeating the power of sin and death in his own death and resurrection he has opened up a new domain in which life can be lived, one empowered by the Spirit rather than one under the power of sin. Those who inhabit this new domain are granted a new status; but the new status is dependent on and derived from the new reality of life in Christ. Second, Paul clearly considers it as a real possibility that, through deliberate disregard of the means of grace, persons can remove themselves from the ‘in Christ’ sphere of existence and thus abort the process of participation with Christ in death and resurrection. His letters contain frequent admonitions to believers about the need to hold firm because of the very real possibility of ‘disqualification’, the image used in 1 Cor. 9.27 (also Rom. 8.17; 1 Cor. 10.1-22; 2 Cor. 13.5; Phil. 3.11-16; 1 Thess. 3.5; cf. Col. 1.22-23). More explicitly, on several occasions he talks of things that are incompatible with being ‘in Christ’, and that, if indulged in, could cut one off from Christ: e.g., circumcision of Gentiles (Gal. 5.2, 4); flagrant participation in pagan worship (1 Cor. 10.14-21); sexual union with a prostitute (1 Cor. 6.13-20). The clear implication of these warnings is that if one is cut off from Christ, one no longer possesses the status that goes with being in Christ. These metaphors – justification, reconciliation, sanctification, redemption, adoption – describe the new status enjoyed by those who are in Christ; but if one deliberately removes oneself from Christ – a real possibility for Paul – these status terms have no independent cash value. For these two reasons at least, I believe that Paul’s participatory language represents the primary element of his pattern of salvation; the change-ofstatus metaphors, important though they are, are secondary and dependent. For Paul, the fundamental nature of Christian existence is the experienced reality of being in Christ, a process that involves dying with Christ to this age, thereby passing beyond the grasp of the power of sin, and rising to the life of the age to come. Those who are in this process have a new status, described in



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part by the metaphors – the juridical metaphor included – that were sketched out above. But the experienced reality, which comes to expression most clearly in the participatory language, is primary. While this reading of Paul stands in sharp contrast to the Reformation reading at significant points, at the same time it is clear that this new sphere of existence in Christ has been made possible by God’s grace alone, and that one enters it by faith alone. But it is in the language of participation, rather than the juridical and other change-of-status metaphors, that we find the heart of Paul’s pattern of religion.

Chapter 14

Jews, Christians,

Categorization

Gentiles: Rethinking the within the Early Jesus Movement and

Magnus Zetterholm Introduction One major theme in George Orwell’s novel 1984 concerns the relation between language and the ability to think and to form concepts. In Orwell’s nightmare society, the political leadership aims at creating a language that cannot be used to express subversive ideas, and words or meanings that could be used in such a way are consequently removed from the language. While Orwell may have overestimated the possibility of controlling society by manipulating language, the ability to think and to conceptualize are closely linked, and the symbolic universe of the individual is almost exclusively created by and transmitted through language.1 There can be no doubt that our way of thinking and forming concepts are affected, and to some extent determined, by the conceptual repertoire in a specific discourse.2 Thus, to some extent it could be argued that those who control terminology also control the discourse as such. Now all concepts and systems of categorizations are created within a specific ideological context, and are therefore scarcely free from ideological influences. This is especially relevant when it comes to different labels in what is usually referred to as ‘early Christianity’. To begin with, the label ‘Christianity’ is, of course, hardly a neutral term, but is loaded with two thousand years of Christian theology. The definition of ‘Christianity’ is to a substantial degree the result of the theological reflection of the church and is therefore, at least partly, dependent on ideas within the church itself, not necessarily of what the church is, but also of what the church believes it should be. When it comes to various designations of groups within ‘early Christianity’ this is important because, historically, ‘Christianity’ as a non-Jewish religion, emerged from the diverse first-century Judaism and developed its specific nature 1. See, for example, P. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Penguin, 1991 [1966]), pp. 166–82.



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when involved in a harsh ideological conflict with Judaism. This has resulted in the creation of a paradigm within Western culture; a specific language and a conceptual apparatus that has led us to think about ‘early Christianity’ in a very specific way: as the opposite of first-century Judaism. We need, however, to realize that this discourse is mainly a theological one and was born out of the theological ambition to prove Christianity to be superior to Judaism, and it is consequently loaded with theological judgements. As such, it still affects the way we look upon the early Jesus movement, and in order to maintain or even increase the analytical precision in our scholarly work, we need to remind ourselves of the causes that have led to the emergence of the prevalent discourse. 1. The Creation of a Paradigm The extensive anti-Jewish propaganda that began in the second century was perhaps primarily the result of a particular historical situation. After the Jewish War, when anti-Jewish feelings permeated Roman society at different levels, it seems that the non-Jewish followers of Jesus found reasons to distance themselves from the Jewish part of the movement.3 In the effort of the non-Jewish Jesus movement to become a legally recognized religion, antiJudaism became an important ideological resource.4 With the decree of 311, which legalized Christianity, the church had in all essentials achieved what it aimed for. By then, Judaism had, however, become a theological problem created by the church’s own propaganda against Jews and Judaism. If God’s grace had been transferred from the Jews to the Christians, how could the continued existence of the Jewish people be explained? This problem was partly solved by Augustine, who created the idea of the Jewish people as eternal witnesses of what will happen when Christ is rejected.5 According to Augustine, the Jews should be left alive, but the idea of their eternal inferior status was placed within the soteriological system of the church.6 During the Reformation, Martin Luther’s radicalization of Augustine’s doctrine of justification increased the already wide gap between Judaism and Christianity. By contrasting law and grace, and by defining this 2. Cf. D. H. Akenson, Saint Paul: A Skeleton to the Historical Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 55–57. 3. M. Simon, Versus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (AD 135–425) (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1996 [1948]), pp. 91–92; M. Zetterholm, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social-Scientific Approach to the Separation between Judaism and Christianity (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 178–224. 4. See Zetterholm, Formation, pp. 193–202. For a recent critique of this view, however, see T. A. Robinson, Ignatius of Antioch and the Partings of The Ways: Early Jewish–Christian Relations (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009), pp. 89–94. 5. Augustine, Fid. 9. See also Simon, Versus Israel, pp. 92–93. 6. For a recent treatment, see P. Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 2008).

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contradiction as Jewish self-righteousness and Pauline faith-righteousness, Luther contributed to creating the modern picture of Judaism and Christianity as two irreconcilable entities. The function of the law in Luther’s theology no doubt serves as an effective instrument for removing the theological fundament of Judaism since the normal way for a Jewish person to express his or her relation to the God of Israel is by Torah observance, an attitude that from Luther’s perspective can only lead to condemnation. By stressing that the doctrine of justification by faith constituted not only an interpretation of Paul, but the correct understanding of the historical Paul, Luther’s view became established as an indisputable historical fact. Not even the Enlightenment was capable of puncturing this Christian construction, in spite of its aspiration to question the dogmatism and despotism of the church. On the contrary, it is basically a theological construction that also becomes the scholarly understanding of Judaism and its relation to Christianity during the nineteenth century. For instance, through the work of Ferdinand Christian Baur, the inferiority of the Jews and Judaism became established as an objective fact, and the antithetical relationship between Judaism and Christianity received almost a scientific legitimation. Baur was so influenced by the Zeitgeist of the period that the theological picture of Judaism and Christianity took precedence over his theoretical foundation. As is well known, Baur was, at least partly, dependent on Hegel’s idealistic philosophy,7 and Hegel believed that the ‘Absolute Spirit’ manifested itself in history through a dialectical process in which it always encounters oppositions. When Baur applied this to the early church history, he found, not surprisingly, two opposing forms of Christianity, Petrine and Pauline, Jewish and Gentile Christianity. According to the Hegelian system, these two forms of Christianity were supposed to merge together and create something new and of a higher order, but would at the same time preserve parts of their original forms. Thus, if Baur had followed Hegel consistently, he would have looked for a synthesis of the Jewish thesis and the Pauline antithesis. What he actually found was a Lutheran Paul.8 In the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, scholars like Ferdinand Weber, Emil Schürer and Wilhelm Bousset created a picture of Judaism that was fully compatible with the theological understanding of the nature of Judaism and the relation between Judaism and Christianity. The picture of Jews and Judaism that came to light within Western culture, and was transmitted throughout the centuries, was developed within ideological contexts that essentially opposed Judaism.9 This has resulted in some very specific terminological problems that affect how we picture the different Jewish and non-Jewish groups during the first century ce. To these we are now going to turn. 7. On Baur’s dependence on Hegel, see H. Harris, The Tübingen School (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 155–58, 168–72. 8. See P. C. Hodgson, The Formation of Historical Theology: A Study of Ferdinand Christian Baur (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 210–12.



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2. The Invention of ‘Jewish Christianity’ Most presentations that deal with the earliest period of the Jesus movement label the movement ‘Christianity’ and the adherents ‘Christians’.10 This terminology strongly suggests that we are dealing with one fairly homogeneous group with a common theology, a common religious identity and a common cultic behaviour. The idea that Jews and non-Jews merged together into ‘a third race’ is partly the result of one of the cornerstones in the traditional paradigm regarding the earliest Jesus movement, namely that Paul argued that the Torah had ceased to have any relevance for those who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. This idea, which is a direct result of a theological construction with roots in an anti-Jewish tradition within Christianity, is almost always taken for granted, and scholars never feel the need to argue for its accuracy. Thus, even E. P. Sanders, whose work has been of utmost importance in the process of changing the picture of ancient Judaism, believes that Paul created an amalgamation consisting of Jews and non-Jews (even though he claims that Paul would have been horrified when confronted with such a statement). Nevertheless, ‘Paul’s own view’, Sanders states, ‘was that, with regard to access to membership in the people of God, Jew and Gentile were on equal ground and both had to join what was, in effect, a third entity.’11 As is evident, one reason for Sanders’ view is the assumption that Paul had abandoned the Torah: ‘The Antioch incident’, Sanders maintains, ‘would seem to show that, if Jews, were present, Paul would expect them not to observe the Jewish dietary laws.’12 Similarly, Bengt Holmberg in an article that emphasizes the antagonistic relation between ‘Jewish’ and ‘Christian’ identities, concludes:

9. See G. F. Moore, ‘Christian Writers on Judaism’, HTR 14 (1921), pp. 197–254, esp. 221–54; E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1977), pp. 33–59; M. Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul: A Student’s Guide to Recent Scholarship (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), pp. 33–67. 10. See, for example, B. Holmberg, ‘The Life in the Diaspora Synagogues: An Evaluation’, in B. Olsson and M. Zetterholm (eds), The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, 14–17 October 2001 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2003), pp. 219–32, esp. 226– 28, for a discussion of the reasons for maintaining the term ‘Christians’; and Zetterholm, Formation, pp. 16–17, n. 21, for a critique of his position. See also J. G. Gager, Reinventing Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. viii; and S. K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews and Gentiles (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 23–24. 11. E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1985), p. 172. 12. Sanders, Law, p. 177.

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We see both Jews and Gentiles in the Christian movement slowly sliding out of their earlier identities, and becoming something no one had ever seen before. This reciprocal identity displacement, which is at the same time a unification process, started early in the history of the church – actually on Easter morning – even if we do not see it completed in the writings of the New Testament.13

Moreover, Mikael Tellbe’s basic assumption in his treatment of the relations between Christians, Jews and civic authorities is that Paul ‘took a position concerning Torah observance and fundamental Jewish identity that definitely placed him outside common Second Temple Judaism’.14 Likewise, Joan E. Taylor, who has set herself out to question the phenomenon of early Jewish Christianity, does not question whether or not Paul advocated a general repudiation of Jewish praxis: ‘Paul’s campaign against the maintenance of Jewish praxis’, she states, ‘was a Leitmotiv of his mission.’15 As these few examples indicate (and the list could be made much longer) one common and almost undisputable assumption in many treatments of ‘early Christianity’ is that one major dividing line between the form of religion advocated by Paul and that of other Jews, including those Jews who also believed Jesus to be the Messiah of Israel, was connected to Torah observance. ‘Pauline Christians’, regardless of ethnicity, are often considered to have moved towards a common religious ideology because of Paul’s assumed negative attitude to the Torah or even to Judaism,16 while ‘Jewish-Christians’ maintained their observance of the Torah. Strangely enough, however, no consensus exists concerning the phenomenon ‘Jewish Christianity’. As James Carleton Paget has put it ‘many questions relating to Jewish Christianity, its history, origins and social and religious profile, remain matters of controversy’.17 For instance, the way ‘Jewish Christianity’ is defined by different scholars implies that there exists a virtually complete confusion on what is actually referred to by the term. Carleton Paget mentions ethnic, praxis-based, ideological and doctrinal definitions.18 Bruce Malina has found eight different

13. B. Holmberg, ‘Jewish Versus Christian Identity in the Early Church’, RB 105 (3) (1998), pp. 397–425, esp. 422 (emphasis in original). 14. M. Tellbe, Paul between Synagogue and State: Christians, Jews, and Civic Authorities in 1 Thessalonians, Romans, and Philippians (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001), p. 75. 15. J. E. Taylor, ‘The Phenomenon of Early Jewish-Christianity: Reality or Scholarly Invention?’, VC 44 (1990), pp. 313–34, esp. 315, see also 314. 16. See the discussion in Sanders, Law, pp. 171–79. 17. J. C. Paget, ‘Jewish Christianity’, in W. Horbury et al. (eds), The Cambridge History of Judaism – Volume Three: The Early Roman Period (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 731–75, esp. 731. 18. Paget, ‘Jewish Christianity’, pp. 734–39. For an overview of definitions and research history with regard to Jewish Christianity and similar terms, see also J. Carleton Paget, ‘The Definition of the Terms Jewish Christian and Jewish Christianity in the History of Research’, in O. Skarsaune and R. Hvalvik (eds), Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), pp. 22–52.



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motivations for defining certain phenomena as ‘Jewish Christian’.19 In one classical work on Jewish Christianity, Jean Daniélou distinguishes between three forms of Jewish Christians: (1) those who thought Jesus to be a prophet or a Messiah, but did not consider him as the son of God, (2) the Christian community in Jerusalem under the leadership of James, and (3) a form of Christianity with a Jewish way of expressing itself.20 According to Daniélou, the label ‘Jewish-Christian’ could be applied even to non-Jews in this third sense and would, at the same time, also include Paul.21 In conclusion: it is not hard to agree with Malina that the label ‘Jewish Christianity’ ‘seems to be a rubber bag term, applied to a host of phenomena yet saying nothing with clarity’.22 Malina makes a serious effort to replace the traditional terminology and suggests that we should distinguish between ‘Christian Judaism’ and ‘Jewish Christianity’. The important difference between these groups is that the former, ‘Christian Judaism’, is comprised of Jews who accept Jesus as the Messiah to come and who believe that the requirements of the Torah are still in force. This description fits most of the pre-70 ce Jerusalem community. ‘Jewish Christianity’ is made up of Jews and Gentiles who believed that Jesus, as the Messiah, has already come in power, wherefore the Torah no longer is relevant. According to Malina, this has basically to do with different views on covenantal theology.23 Malina’s suggestion is interesting and forces us to focus on some new questions, but in the end it seems as if it reiterates the traditional paradigm in a somewhat new way. We still find a fundamental distinction between two forms of ‘Christianity’ with regard to Jewish practices, that we, for instance, recognize from Baur. Raymond Brown, on the other hand, avoids many of the pitfalls that stem from the traditional paradigm. He believes that the distinction between Jewish and Gentile Christianity is relevant only from the second century onwards and emphasizes instead another distinction, namely, the one between Hellenists and Hebrew Jewish Christians. According to Brown, Paul is best seen as a ‘Hebrew Christian’.24 Brown furthermore assumes that different Jewish approaches to non-Jewish converts produced different kinds

19. B. J. Malina, ‘Jewish Christianity or Christian Judaism: Toward a Hypothetical Definition’, JSJ 7 (1) (1976), pp. 46–57, esp. 47–48. 20. J. Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity A History of Early Christian Doctrine before the Council of Nicea 1 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1977), pp. 7–9. For overviews see also A. F. J. Klijn, ‘The Study of Jewish Christianity’, NTS 20 (1974), pp. 419–31; S. K. Riegel, ‘Jewish Christianity: Definitions and Terminology’, NTS 24 (1978), pp. 410–15. 21. Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity, p. 9. Cf. E. Käsemann, Perspectives on Paul (Mifflintown: Siegler Press, 1996 [1969 in German]), p. 73, who considers Paul one of the founders of Gentile Christianity. 22. Malina, ‘Jewish Christianity’, p. 46. 23. Malina, ‘Jewish Christianity’, pp. 50–52. 24. R. E. Brown, ‘Not Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity but Types of Jewish/Gentile Christianity’, CBQ 45 (1) (1983), pp. 74–79, pp. 75–76.

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of Jewish/Gentile Christianity. He finds four types: (1) Jewish Christians and their Gentile converts who practised full observance of the Torah, (2) Jewish Christians and their Gentile converts who only required Gentile Christians to keep some purity laws, (3) Jewish Christians and their Gentile converts who did not insist on circumcision or Jewish purity laws regarding food for Gentile converts.25 (According to Brown, this is Paul’s position, and he states that ‘this type of Christianity did not entail a break with the cultic practices of Judaism … nor did it impel Jewish Christians to abandon circumcision and the Law’.26) The fourth type of Christianity is the Hellenists’ position. They did not insist on circumcision or food laws, and did not consider the temple cult relevant any longer. (Brown believes that this is the kind of Christianity that spread to Antioch, among other places, according to Acts 11.19-20.27) Brown’s reconstruction takes into account that ‘early Christianity’ is a much more complex phenomenon than is usually assumed, and his observation that there existed several Jewish ways of relating to non-Jews is correct. The fact that he does not stress a fundamental conflict between Jewish and Gentile forms of Christianity moves the discussion in a direction where other issues become important. However, his emphasis on ‘converts’ to ‘Christianity’ illustrates a fundamental problem in most treatments of ‘early Christianity’, namely, the assumption that ‘Christianity’ existed as a well-defined entity during the first century and that people could actually convert to it. This is far from certain but shows, together with the rest of the assumptions influenced by the traditional paradigm, the need for a new terminology. 3. A New Paradigm – New Answers While the traditional paradigm may work well in order to produce a religious ideology, it is not adequate when it comes to historical reconstructions. Unfortunately, religious and historical truths do not necessarily coincide. In the following, I would like to indicate some areas where an emerging new paradigm may drastically change our understanding of ‘early Christianity’ and how this is likely to affect terminology. The perhaps most important aspect concerns the new view of Paul’s relation to Judaism. While, according to the traditional paradigm, it was taken for granted that Paul broke with Judaism, recent development within Pauline studies has rendered such an unproblematic assumption impossible. Instead of assuming that Paul opposed Judaism, many scholars today rather work from the presupposition that Paul remained within first-century Judaism and that he continued to observe the Torah. This change of perspective has undeniably led to new results, and scholars working from what might 25. 26. 27.

Brown, ‘Not Jewish Christianity’, pp. 77–78. Brown, ‘Not Jewish Christianity’, p. 78. Brown, ‘Not Jewish Christianity’, p. 78.



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be called a ‘radical new perspective’ have reached fundamentally different conclusions than scholars before them.28 Even though the idea that Paul never left Judaism but remained a Torahobservant Jew all his life still represents a minority view, the mere existence of this position calls for a conceptual apparatus that at least makes it possible to discuss the issue. If Paul remained within Second Temple Judaism, which is at least theoretically possible, we must allow for a completely new understanding of the phenomenon ‘early Christianity’. For instance, the obvious conflicts between Paul and his so-called opponents must have concerned other issues than simply that Paul had abandoned the Torah. Furthermore, Paul’s negative statements about the Torah must also be explained in a new way. One possible solution is that negative statements about the Torah in Paul’s letters were directed to non-Jews, who believed that the God of Israel would consider them righteous if they imitated a Jewish way of living. If this is correct, it implies that non-Jews perhaps normally had taken up a kind of Jewish lifestyle, something that is strongly suggested by the sources.29 It may thus be correct that Jews and non-Jews within the Jesus movement moved towards a common identity – but a Jewish identity. What if Paul, convinced that the God of Israel ultimately would provide salvation for Jews within the covenant (Rom. 11.26), realized that non-Jews who, judaized – that is, imitated Jewish Torah observance – had missed the vital ethnic component in Judaism, namely, that it was the Jewish people who had been entrusted with the Torah, which thus constitutes their way of expressing their relationship with the God of Israel? It is sociologically most likely that the first non-Jewish adherents to the Jesus movement were primarily recruited from the presumably large group of non-Jews, who were already interested in Judaism, who interacted with Jews in the synagogues, and who already may have adopted a kind of Jewish lifestyle.30 It is not inconceivable, that such non-Jewish adherents to the Jesus movement argued that they also had a share in the world to come, because of their religious behaviour. For non-Jews with an interest in Judaism it would certainly make sense, in a Roman religious context, to assume that the God of Israel, as the gods of Rome, demanded scrupulous cultic observance.31 28. For an overview of the emergence of a new, radical view on Paul, see Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul, pp. 225–40. 29. Most of them are conveniently collected and discussed in M. Murray, Playing a Jewish Game: Gentile Christian Judaizing in the First and Second Centuries CE (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2004), pp. 11–27. 30. See M. Zetterholm, ‘Paul and the Missing Messiah’, in M. Zetterholm (ed.), The Messiah: In Early Judaism and Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), pp. 33–55, esp, 43–46. Cf., however, Slee, who claims that Acts 11.19 refers to Jews who are welcoming non-Jews with no former connection to Judaism; see M. Slee, The Church in Antioch in the First Century CE: Communion and Conflict (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), p. 24. 31. J.-A. Shelton, As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History (New York: Oxford University Pres, 1998), pp. 369–72; R. Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times (New York: Routledge, 2001 [1998 in French]), pp. 1–13.

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As I have argued elsewhere,32 it is possible to explain Paul’s statements against the Torah as a reaction against non-Jewish involvement in Torah affairs. In the Sifre, finally redacted during the third century but containing much older traditions, the relation between Israel and the Torah is compared to a marriage – and the involvement of the nations in the Torah is compared to adultery: [T]he Torah is betrothed to Israel and is like a married woman with respect to the nations of the world. And so it says, ‘Can a man rake embers into his bosom without burning his clothes? Can a man walk on live coals without scorching his feet?’ It is the same with one who sleeps with his fellow’s wife; none who touches her will go unpunished.33

In commenting on this text, Sifre §345, Steven Fraade summarizes its meaning: ‘For the nations to seek the textual pleasures of the Torah outside a legally defined commitment to it is comparable to one who seeks the sexual pleasures of another’s wife.’34 However, this negative view of the relation between the non-Jew and the Torah has a counterpart in a more universalistic tendency according to which non-Jews were admonished to partake in Torah observance.35 If confronted with non-Jews who were used to observe the Torah, even admonished to do so by Jews, Paul, should he have held views like those in Sifre, may have stressed that the Torah is the exclusive property of the Jewish people. Engaging in Torah observance is like walking on live coals, and the Torah could even be described in terms of being a curse for the non-Jew (Gal. 3.13). This is not to say that Paul did not find it desirable for non-Jews to accept ethical principles derived from the Torah, or adopt certain Jewish cultural features, but rather that Torah observance in a technical sense, understood as a part of the covenantal relationship between the God of Israel and the Jewish people, is reserved for the Jewish people only. If a non-Jew, imitating a Jewish lifestyle, would claim that this made him or her righteous before the God of Israel, Paul may have argued that making people righteous was never the purpose of the Torah, which rather was to make Israel holy in the true sense of the word, and that righteousness before the God of Israel, the God of the nations, now was possible through Christ.

32. Zetterholm, ‘Missing Messiah’, pp. 40–43; M. Zetterholm, ‘The Didache, Matthew, James and Paul: Reconstructing Historical Developments in Antioch’, in H. Van de Sandt and J. Zangenberg (eds), Matthew, James and the Didache: Three Related Documents in Their Jewish and Christian Setting (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 73–90, esp. 86–88. 33. Cited from S. D. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), p. 57. 34. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, p. 58. 35. See M. Hirshman, ‘Rabbinic Universalism in the Second and Third Centuries’, HTR 93 (2) (2000), pp. 101–15; Stowers, Rereading Romans, pp. 58–65.



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4. In Search of a New Terminology The recent development within Pauline studies and the emergence of an alternative way of picturing Paul’s relation to the Torah and to Judaism, together with a more complex view of the relation between non-Jews and Jewish communities, imply that praxis-based attempts to distinguish between different groups may fail simply because most people in the early Jesus movement may have been involved in some sort of Jewish practices. If Paul was as Torah observant as Peter, James and the ‘believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees’ (Acts 15.5), and if non-Jews within the movement imitated aspects of Torah observance, terms like ‘Jewish-Christian’, and ‘Jewish Christianity’ seem to be of little value. The attempt to use Jewish behaviour for distinguishing between groups becomes even more problematic if we consider the fact that there probably did not exist a common halakhic system in the sense of fixed rules agreed upon by most people or religious leaders, during the first century ce.36 What was considered proper Torah observance varied almost certainly among different groups, especially in the diaspora, where it is likely that different attitudes towards the surrounding society created different halakhic systems; for instance, for how Jews could interact with non-Jews.37 This draws attention to the status of the non-Jews within the movement. If the early Jesus movement was a truly Jewish faction and if some representatives, like Paul, tried to prevent non-Jews from becoming Jews, is ‘conversion’ really an adequate term to describe what was going on? Apart from some groups within the Jesus movement there seems to have been a general agreement that non-Jews did not have to become Jews in order to be saved (Acts 15.19-20, 28-29; Gal. 2.9). Both with Paul, and among the leadership in Jerusalem, there seems to have been a hesitation to turn nonJews into Jews (Gal. 2.6-9; Acts 15). Paul seems to have been almost obsessed with the idea of not accepting conversions of non-Jews, probably because he thought that the oneness of the God of Israel would be compromised if humanity were only saved as Jews.38 Now, this means that Paul may have argued for a preservation of the ethnic identity of Jews and non-Jews within the Jesus movement,39 which implies that no one really converted to anything, if we by conversion mean abandoning one religion for another. Such an idea, by the way, to give up all other gods in order to worship only one, was quite foreign in a Graeco-Roman context. The degree and nature of involvement in the Jesus movement is also relevant from a non-Jewish perspective. Shaye Cohen has made us aware 36. C. Hezer, ‘Social Fragmentation, Plurality of Opinion, and Nonobservance of Halakhah: Rabbis and Community in Late Roman Palestine’, JSQ 1 (1993/94), pp. 234–51, esp. 235. 37. On the religious differentiation of first-century diaspora Judaism, see Zetterholm, Formation, pp. 53–111. 38. Rom. 3.28-31. See also M. D. Nanos, The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), p. 184.

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of the range of non-Jewish attitudes towards Judaism. Cohen mentions, for instance, non-Jews who only incorporated the God of Israel into their pantheon together with their other gods, benefactors, or individuals who admired some aspect of Judaism.40 There is no reason to assume that the same was not true with respect to non-Jews who were involved in Jewish communities where Jesus was believed to be the Messiah of Israel. Thus, some individuals may have been able to break away from their Graeco-Roman religious context, socially, religiously and politically. It is, however, far from certain that this was an option for everyone. Was it, for instance, possible for non-Jews from the upper classes, who may have had cultic obligations due to their position in society, to refrain from actions that from a Jewish perspective would be defined as ‘idolatry’? We may be forced to accept the idea that not all non-Jews who were connected to the Jesus movement were wholeheartedly committed to worship only the God of Israel through Christ. In fact, Paul’s discussion of ‘idolatry’ in 1 Corinthians 8–10, could be taken as an indication that he knew and to some extent accepted that people within the community participated in social events where Graeco-Romans cults were performed.41 I would assume that the notion of ‘conversion’ is of little help in the context of the early Jesus movement. This way of looking at the early Jesus movement emphasizes its Jewishness. In an article from 1974, Albertus F. J. Klijn stated that ‘the object of the study of Jewish Christianity is to detect the presence, the origin, the development and the disappearance of this Jewish influence’.42 From this perspective, the Jewish feature in Christianity is an anomaly that must be explained. In reality, it is exactly the other way around. From a purely historical point of view, the early Jesus movement must be understood as one of many ways of realizing a Jewish life in antiquity. The truly interesting question is rather how this Jewish movement turned into a non-Jewish religion. This is the real birth of Christianity. History has emphatically stressed that Judaism and Christianity exist in an oppositional relationship and constitute two different religions. Why not take this seriously and reserve the term ‘Christianity’ for the nonJewish religion that emerged in the beginning of the second century? Evidence that groups within the Jesus movement were called ‘Christians’ before the Jewish War is limited, to say the least, and even if they were, the label would have quite a different referential context compared to 50 (or 2,000) years later.43 To use the labels ‘Christianity’ and ‘Christians’ for designating 39. W. S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity (London: T&T Clark, 2006), pp. 156–58. 40. S. J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 140–74. 41. M. Zetterholm, ‘Purity and Anger: Gentiles and Idolatry in Antioch’, Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 1: Article 10 (2005), pp. 1–24. 42. Klijn, ‘Jewish Christianity’, p. 426. 43. The term Xristiano/v occurs only three times in the NT: Acts 11.26, 26.28; 1 Pet. 4.16. For examples of scholars who believes Acts’ statement refers to the situation at the beginning of the 40s CE, see J. Taylor, ‘Why Were the Disciples First Called “Christians”



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groups and people within the early Jesus movement is an invitation to severe misunderstandings.44 Instead we must try to find a more neutral terminology that focuses on the relevant distinctions, takes the complexity of the early Jesus movement into consideration, and makes it possible to experiment with different models for analysing groups and group interaction. Since the Jesus movement originated within Second Temple Judaism, as did the concept of the Messiah, it seems justified to basically use a Jewish perspective on Jews and non-Jews. This obviously means emphasizing the ethnic aspect. In discussing the existence of non-Jews in the synagogues, the Jewish philosopher of religion Jacob Taubes has pointed out that non-Jewish participants were passive observers. The reason for this, according to Taubes, is that: from the Jewish point of view that’s what the world looks like – to the present day, by the way, in this respect nothing has changed, and all of this blahblah about JewishChristian understanding is not worth mentioning – the world is divided into Jews and Gentiles. That there are Christians is something that has not entered consciousness, so to speak. Whoever tells you any different is an interest party. That’s how it is.45

Taubes’ statement may be provoking, but with regard to the historical situation, he is probably correct. This does not mean that the boundary between Jews and non-Jews in antiquity was clearly marked,46 but, it seems, the distinction was a vital component within the early Jesus movement. It is possible that different ideas of how to relate to non-Jewish adherents to the movement was the main issue that created tensions both within the movement and in relation to the Jewish world outside the movement – not issues connected to Torah observance. Thus, the first distinction we should emphasize is the one between Jew and non-Jew. The second is between people who considered Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah and those who did not. Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah are best referred to as Jewish followers or disciples of Jesus. NonJews who shared this belief are consequently referred to in a similar manner. We should, however, be aware of the fact that ‘Messiah’ did not necessarily mean the same thing for Jews and non-Jews within the movement.47 These two groups make up the ‘Jesus movement’, which we should think of as one of at Antioch? (Acts 11, 26)’, RB 101 (1) (1994), pp. 75–94; Tellbe, Synagogue and State, pp. 64–66. Cf. Akenson, Saint Paul, p. 63: ‘If the followers of Jesus-the-Christ were conscious of themselves as “Christians,” they certainly did a good job of keeping quiet.’ 44. Slee, Church in Antioch, is conscious of the ‘overtones of beliefs and practices’ (p. 8) in the term ‘Christians’, but still finds it justified to use the label in an Antiochean context, because of Acts’ statement (11.26), even though she has previously (pp. 5–6) questioned Acts’ historical reliability. 45. J. Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004 [1993 in German]), p. 20. See also Cohen, Beginnings, p. 341. 46. See Cohen, Beginnings, pp. 25–68. 47. A. Y. Collins, ‘Mark and His Readers: The Son of God among Greeks and Romans’, HTR 93 (2000), pp. 85–100.

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many manifestations of first-century Judaism. Jews who joined this messianic movement moved within their symbolic system and did not convert from one religion to another. Non-Jews who joined the movement were usually told not to change their ethnic status, but, regarding this, different opinions seem to have coexisted. I would strongly recommend that the labels ‘Christian’ and ‘Christianity’ should be avoided when dealing with the earliest period of the Jesus movement (which generally is a more fitting term). ‘Christianity’ is best understood as the non-Jewish religion that emerged during the second century. The main difference between the ‘Jesus movement’ and ‘Christianity’ is that within the Jesus movement Jewish identity was default. The problem concerned those who were not Jews. During the first century it was the non-Jewish followers of Jesus who constituted the anomaly. This would eventually change. During the second century we find that Jewish identity became incompatible with being ‘Christian’ (a term that clearly was used then as a self-designation) and different Christian authors partook in a crusade to purge the new religion from all Jewish influences. Admittedly, this project may have been less successful than is usually assumed, at least initially, and various less orthodox forms of Christianity existed during several hundreds of years, some including Torah-observing Jews who believed Jesus to be the Messiah, and even Jewish disciples who argued that the Torah should no longer be observed.48 However, the development during late antiquity (which may require a terminology of its own) does not change the fact that during the earliest phase of the Jesus movement the distinction between ‘Jew’ and ‘non-Jew’ was perhaps more important than the issue of Torah observance among Jewish followers of Jesus. Regardless of which terminological apparatus we finally decide to use, a basic requirement must be that it is capable of taking such a scenario into account.

48. See, for example, C. E. Fonrobert, ‘The Didascalia Apostolorum: A Mishnah for the Disciples of Jesus’, JECS 9 (4) (2001), pp. 483–509; D. Frankfurter, ‘Beyond “Jewish Christianity”: Continuing Religious Sub-Cultures of the Second and Third Centuries and Their Documents’, in A. H. Becker and A. Yoshiko Reed (ed.), The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Midle Ages (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), pp. 131–43; P. Fredriksen, ‘What “Partings of the Ways”? Jews, Gentiles, and the Ancient Mediterranean City’, in Becker and Yoshiko Reed (eds), The Ways That Never Parted, pp. 35–63; S. Hidal, ‘Evidence for Jewish Believers in the Syriac Fathers’, in Skarsaune and Hvalvik (eds), Jewish Believers in Jesus, pp. 568–80.

Select Bibliography of William S. Campbell’s Publications ‘Why did Paul write Romans?’, Expository Times 85 (1974), pp. 264–69. ‘Some Recent Literature on Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Critical Survey’, Biblical Theology 25 (1975), pp. 1–9. ‘Christ the End of the Law: Romans 10:4’, in E. A. Livingstone (ed.), Studia Biblica 1978, Vol. 3, (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1980), pp. 65–72. ‘Salvation for Jews and Gentiles: Krister Stendahl and Paul’s Letter to the Romans’, in E. A. Livingstone (ed.), Studia Biblica 1978, Vol. 3 (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1980), pp. 73–81. ‘Romans 3 as a Key to the Structure and Thought of the Letter’, Novum Testamentum 23 (1981), pp. 22–40. ‘The Romans Debate’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 10 (1981), pp. 19–28. ‘Revisiting Romans: A Decade of Studies, 1972–1981’, Scripture Bulletin 12 (1981), pp. 2–10. ‘The Freedom and Faithfulness of God in Relation to Israel’, Essays in Honour of Professor A. T. Hanson, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 13 (1981), pp. 27–45. ‘The Place of Romans 9–11 within the Structure and Thought of the Letter’, Studia Evangelica VII (Berlin, 1982), pp. 90–99. ‘Paul’s Understanding of Revelation with Particular Reference to Continuity and Discontinuity between Christianity and Judaism’, in D. Kerr and D. Cohn-Sherbok (eds), Christians, Muslims and Jews (Canterbury: University of Kent, 1983), pp. 53–60. ‘Historical Context, Exegesis and Preaching with Particular Reference to Paul’s Letters’, Irish Biblical Studies 5 (April 1983), pp. 73–93. ‘Christianity and Judaism: Continuity and Discontinuity’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research (April 1984), pp. 54–59. New Testament sections of Great Events of Bible Times: New Perspectives on the People, Places and History of the Biblical World (with Professors John Ferguson and Frances Young), J. Harper (ed.), Consultant Bruce Metzger (London: Marshall Editions, 1987; New York: Doubleday, 1987; Readers Digest Association, North America, 1991), German edition I. Meyer (ed.), Faszinierende Welt der Bibel: Von Menschen und Schicksalen, Schauplätzen und Ereignissen (Basel, Wien: Herder Verlag, 1988).

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‘Did Paul Advocate Separation from the Synagogue?’, Scottish Journal of Theology 42 (February 1990), pp. 457–67. ‘Paul’s Missionary Practice and Policy in Romans’, Irish Biblical Studies 12 (January 1990), pp. 2–25. Paul’s Gospel in an Intercultural Context: Jew & Gentile in the Letter to the Romans (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 1991, repr. edn 1992). ‘Romans 3 as a Key to the Structure and Thought of the Letter’, in K. P. Donfried (ed.), The Romans Debate (rev. and exp. edn; Peabody, MA: Hendricksons, 1991), pp. 251–65. ‘The Sociological Approach to the New Testament: Promise and Problems’, Journal of Beliefs & Values 14 (1) (1993), pp. 2–10. ‘Covenant and New Covenant’, pp. 179–83; ‘Israel’, pp. 441–46; ‘Judaizers’, pp. 512–16; and ‘Olive Tree’, pp. 642–44, in Dictionary of Paul and his Letters (Downer’s Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993). ‘The Contribution of Traditions to Paul’s Theology’, in D. M. Hay (ed.), Pauline Theology, Vol. 2 (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1993), pp. 234–54, republished Atlanta: SBL, 2002. ‘The Rule of Faith in Romans 12:1–15:13’, Pauline Theology, Vol. 3, ed. D. M. Hay and E. Johnson (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1995), pp. 259–86, republished Atlanta: SBL, 2002. Research in Religious Education, ed. with L. J. Francis and W. K. Kay (Leominster: Gracewing, 1996). ‘Church as Israel, People of God’, in R. P. Martin and P. H. Davids (eds), The Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1997), pp. 204–19. ‘Favouritism and Egalitarianism: Irreconcilable Emphases in Romans?’, Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers, Annual Meeting 1998, pp. 12–32. ‘The Rise of Christianity’, Journal of Beliefs and Values 19 (1) (1998), pp. 135–39. ‘Millennial Optimism for Jewish–Christian Dialogue’, in D. Cohn-Sherbok (ed.), The Future of Jewish–Christian Dialogue (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999), pp. 217–37. ‘Martin Luther and Paul’s Epistle to the Romans’, in O. O’Sullivan (ed.), The Bible as Book: The Reformation (London: The British Library, 2000), pp. 103–14. ‘Divergent Images of Paul and His Mission’, in C. Grenholm and D. Patte (eds), Reading Israel in Romans: Legitimacy and Plausibility of Divergent Interpretations, Romans through History and Cultures Series, Vol. I (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 2000), pp. 187–211. ‘Significant Nuances in Contemporary Pauline Interpretation’, Irish Biblical Studies 24 (2002), pp. 184–200. ‘Zwischen Synagoge und Staat: Identität und Konflikt in den paulinischen Gemeinden’, in G. Gelardini (ed.), «Was» begegnet sich im religiösen, christlich-jüdischen Dialog? Aktuelle kultur- und religionswissenschaftliche Theorien zur Deutung, Verhältnisbestimmung und Diskursfähigkeit von Religionen (Stuttgart and Berlin: Kohlhammer Verlag, 2003), pp. 151–70.



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‘Martin Luther and Paul’s Epistle to the Romans’ (abridged version), in Luther Digest: An Annual Abridgement of Luther Studies 11 (2003), pp. 7–9. ‘Covenant, New Covenant’ and ‘Israel II’, in D. G. Reid (ed.), Dictionary of New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 2004), pp. 523–29. ‘“All God’s Beloved in Rome!” Jewish Roots and Christian Identity’, in S. E. McGinn (ed.), Celebrating Romans: Template for Pauline Theology – Essays in Honor of Robert Jewett (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 67–82. ‘Perceptions of Compatibility between Christianity and Judaism in Pauline Interpretation’, Paul between Jews and Christians, Biblical Interpretation XIII (3) 2005, special edition, pp. 298–316. Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006 [pb. edn 2008]). Medieval Readings of Romans: Thinking with Tradition and Scripture, ed. with P. Hawkins and B. D. Schildgen; Romans through History and Cultures Series (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2007). ‘Reading Romans in Conversation with Medieval Interpreters: The Challenge of Cross-Fertilization’, in W. S. Campbell, P. Hawkins and B. D. Schildgen (eds), Medieval Readings of Romans: Thinking with Tradition and Scripture; Romans through History and Cultures Series (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 202–12. ‘A Pioneering Experiment: Islamic Studies within a Teaching Qualification’, with M. C. Felderhof, in Journal of Beliefs and Values 28 (3) (December 2007), pp. 297–308. ‘Religion, Identity and Ethnicity: The Contribution of Paul the Apostle’, Journal of Beliefs and Values 29 (2) (August 2008), pp. 139–50. ‘Unity and Diversity in the Church: Transformed Identities and the Peace of Christ in Ephesians’, Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies 25 (January 2008), pp. 15–30. ‘Built on Tradition but Not Bound by Tradition’, in K. Ehrensperger and R. W. Holder (eds), Reformation Readings of Romans; Romans through History and Cultures Series (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2008), pp. 166–70. ‘Gentile Identity and Transformation in Christ according to Paul’, in M. Zetterholm and S. Byrskog (eds), The Making of Christianity: Conflict, Contacts, and Constructions, Coniectanea Biblica, New Testament Series (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, forthcoming 2011). ‘I Rate All Things as Loss: Paul’s Rhetoric of Comparison’, in P. Spitaler (ed.) Celebrating Paul: Festschrift for Jerome Murphy O’Connor and Joseph Fitzmyer (CBQ Monograph Series; Washington, DC: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2010). ‘Käsemann on Romans: The End of an Era or the Way to the Future?’, in Modern Readings of Romans; Romans through History and Cultures Series, Vol. 9 (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2011).

258

Reading Paul in Context

‘Ernst Käsemann and His Theology’, in Daniel Patte (general ed.), Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010). ‘“Let Us Maintain Peace” (Rom 5.2): Reconciliation and Social Responsibility’, in A. Sell (ed.), The Bible in the Academy, Church, and Culture: Festschrift in Honour of John T. Williams (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010). ‘Universality and Particularity in Paul’s Understanding and Strategy of Mission’, in T. J. Burke and B. S. Rosner (eds), Paul as Missionary (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2010). ‘The Addressees of Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Assemblies of God in House Churches and Synagogues?’, in F. Wilk and J. Ross Wagner (eds), Between Gospel and Election: Explorations in the Interpretation of Romans 9–11 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). ‘Covenantal Theology and Participation in Christ: Pauline Perspectives on Transformation’, in R. Bieringer and D. Pollefeyt (eds), New Perspectives on Paul and the Jews (Leuven: Peeters, 2010).

Index Old Testament Genesis 1.26 82 1.26-27 139 27.1 66 Exodus 9.12 53 9.16 53 20.17 35 20.21-22 117 21.24 66 Leviticus 10.10 97 11 106 11.4 106 11.5 106 11.6 106 11.7 106 11.8 106 11.10-11 106 11.12 106 11.23 106 18.2 102 19 102 19.2 102 19.9-10 102 19.13-14 102 19.15-18 102 19.18 85, 102, 125 19.33-34 102 19.34 125 24.19 66 Numbers 8.14 225 Deuteronomy 5.25-26 117 5.30-31 117 18.18-19 117

of

Biblical References

18.18-22 117 28 83 28.49-57 83 29.3 64 32 80 32.1-3 81 32.1-6 81 32.4 81 32.4-6 82 32.4-19 81 32.7-14 81, 82, 83 32.8-9 82 32.10-14 83 32.13-14 83 32.15-18 81, 82, 83 32.17 83 32.19-25 83 32.19-27 81, 82 32.20 83 32.21 82, 83 32.22-25 83 32.23 83 32.26 83 32.27 83 32.28 84 32.28-33 81, 82, 83 32.30 84 32.30-31 84 32.30-35 81 32.31 84 32.33 83, 84 32.34-35 84 32.34-43 81, 82 32.35 82, 85 32.36 84, 224 32.36-38 81 32.37-39 84 32.38 84 32.39 84 32.39-42 81 32.40-42 84 32.43 82, 84, 85

Joshua 24.30 224 Judges 15.18 224 1 Samuel 2.6 84 3.18 224 23.10-11 224 2 Samuel 3.18 224 7 16 7.15 224 22.50 18 1 Kings 18.36 224 2 Kings 5.7 84 18.12 224 Nehemiah 9.14 224 Esther 5.1 101 Job 16.11 28 17.7 53, 65, 66 27.16 140 Psalms 5 31 9 31 13.1 31 14.2 84 17.50 18 18.49 84 19.4 120

260 19.8 35 25.1 106 27.9 224 30.17 224 35.1-4 31 35.2 31 35.7-10 31 35.11-12 31 53.2 84 69.22-23 64 85.9 16 94.12 58 105.26 224 105.42 224 106.37-38 83 110 165 116.16 224 117.1 37, 84 119.17 224 139 31 140.3 84 143.2 31 Proverbs 3.11-12 58 Isaiah 6.10 53 10.5-19 83 11.10 18, 19, 41, 84 14.24-27 83 27 56 27–28 61 27.6 61 27.9 56, 58, 61, 66 29.10 64 41.4 84 43.10-11 84 43.13 84 43.25 84 49.1-8 224 51.12 84 51.23 140 53 162 53.11 162 53.12 162 59 56 59–61 61 59.20 58 59.20-21 56, 58, 66 59.21 58

Index of Biblical References Jeremiah 1.5 125 1.13-14 83 4.5-31 83 5.15-17 83 6.1-5 83 7.25 224 25.4 224 30.11 58 38.31-36 125 Lamentations 3.31-33 58 Ezekiel 22.26 97 38.17 224 44.23 97 Daniel 2.21 6 2.37 6 2.44 6, 12 7.13 6 7.14 6, 12 7.24 6 9.6 224 Amos 3.7 224 Habakkuk 1.11 84 2.3 84 Zechariah 1.6 224 Apocrypha Tobit 13.2 84 Judith 8.27 58 Wisdom 12.1-2 58 12.26 58 16.13 84

1 Maccabees 1.47 97 1.62 97 2 Maccabees 6.12-17 58 4 Ezra 12.11-12 4 Maccabees 18.18-19 84

New Testament Matthew 20.25 12 27.5 Mark 3.5 55 10.29-30 186 Luke 2.31 18 14.1 12 14.26 186 22.25-27 76 John 2.20 5.18 12.40 12.42

194 139 55 12

Acts 4.8 12 4.27 18 10.14 99 10.15 99 10.28 99, 103 10.38 76 11.19 249 11.26 252, 253 15 251 15.5 251 15.19-20 251 15.28-29 251 18.1 191 18.2 75 18.2-3 74 18.2-4 75

18.3 75 18.11 190 18.12 75 18.25 183 19.3 183 19.8-41 199 19.23-25 199 26.28 252 Romans 1.1 15, 78, 218, 219, 220, 222. 223, 225, 226, 227, 228 1.1-6 222 1.1-7 78, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222 1.1-17 220 1.2 14, 222, 227 1.2-4 218, 220 1.2-5 227 1.3 79 1.3-4 4, 13, 14, 16, 18, 27, 46, 78, 80, 219 1.4 6, 14, 27, 79, 222, 224 1.5 19, 37, 41, 219, 222 1.5-6 78, 218 1.6 219, 222, 225, 226 1.6-7 221, 222, 226 1.7 14, 23, 37, 74, 78, 80, 91, 102, 218, 219, 222, 225, 226 1.7-8 222 1.8 19, 37, 78, 79 1.8-15 78, 221 1.9 78, 79 1.9-10 79 1.10 220 1.11 79 1.11-12 79, 80 1.12 222 1.13 79 1.14 84 1.15 222 1.16 37, 79, 80, 227 1.16-17 8, 25, 78, 79 1.16-18 9, 26 1.17 20, 25, 78, 79 1.18 8, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 37, 86 1.18-32 26, 100 1.18–3.20 26, 30, 33 1.19-20 124

261

Index of Biblical References 1.21 29 1.21-22 29 1.24 28, 29, 101 1.25 27 1.26 28 1.28 28 1.28-32 29 2.1 53 2.3-11 48 2.5 35 2.8 35 2.9-10 37 2.16 30 2.27 17 2.28 31 2.29 124, 145 3 50 3.2 20, 70 3.2-3 16 3.5 20, 21, 30 3.7 30 3.8 30 3.9 8, 30, 37 3.10 31 3.10-18 31 3.11 84 3.12 37 3.13 84 3.13-14 31 3.18 31 3.19 31, 37 3.20 31, 32, 37 3.21-26 47 3.22 37 3.23 8, 37 3.24 38 3.24-26 161 3.26 20 3.29-30 84, 121 4.5 38 4.11 17, 18, 37 4.11-12 17 4.12 17 4.16 37 4.17 84 4.18 18 4.20 21 4.24 14 4.25 162 5.1 14 5.1-4 48 5.1-11 21 5.2 16, 21

5.3 233 5.5 15 5.8 49, 165 5.9 35 5.11 14 5.12 37, 49 5.12-21 49, 240 5.12-25 22 5.12-26 48 5.15-20 38 5.18 36, 37, 49, 163 5.21 14 6 233 6.1-2 156 6.3 37, 167 6.3-4 235 6.4-5 22 6.5 22 6.6 235 6.11 22 6.12 34 6.13-14 87 6.23 14, 38 7 32, 240 7.7 124, 125 7.7-8 33 7.9-12 34 7.17 240 7.19 33 7.20 34, 240 7.21-25 35 7.22 35 7.25 14, 35 8.1 124, 125, 126 8.9 235 8.9-11 235 8.14 37 8.15 22, 23 8.17 16, 240 8.22-23 236 8.25 17 8.28 23, 225 8.29 22 8.30 16 8.32 164, 165 8.34 164, 165 8.35 11 8.39 14 9–11 74, 80, 209 9–15 82 9.1-5 81 9.5 37 9.6 37

262 9.6-29 82 9.7 37 9.14 81 9.17 37 9.17-18 53 9.19-24 86 9.22 36 9.30–10.21 82 10.2 130 10.3 20 10.4 121 10.9 14 10.11-13 37 10.12 84 10.16 20 10.17 20 10.18 37 10.19 82, 83 10.26 37 11 48 11.1-2 36 11.1-10 82 11.7 53, 55, 59, 64, 66, 71 11.7-10 72 11.8 64 11.8-10 66, 71 11.9-10 64 11.11 60 11.11-12 60 11.11-15 57 11.11-24 82, 89 11.11-29 89 11.13-36 45 11.16 57 11.17 57, 60 11.17-21 57, 59, 60 11.17-24 55, 57 11.18 57 11.19 57 11.20 20, 57 11.22-24 57 11.23 20 11.25 52, 53, 55, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 66, 67, 71 11.25-26 56, 60, 61, 62, 71, 72 11.25-27 57, 60, 67, 71 11.25-32 82 11.26 22, 36, 249 11.26-27 57, 61 11.27 61 11.28 59, 60, 80, 89

Index of Biblical References 11.28-29 57 11.29 38 11.30-32 59, 60 11.32 36, 38 11.33-36 86 12–13 102 12–15 82 12.1 59, 86, 102 12.1–15.13 13 12.2 13, 86, 102, 103, 105 12.3-8 86 12.3-21 102 12.4-5 235 12.9-10 86 12.9-13 102 12.10 86 12.11 86 12.12 86 12.13 108 12.16 86 12.18 13, 86 12.19 82 13.1 6, 10 13.1-7 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 41 13.3 12, 88 13.3-4 10 13.7 10, 88 13.8-10 125 13.11 13, 22 13.11-12 82 13.11-14 13 13.14 34 14–15 74, 80 14.1–15.13 48, 90, 108, 109 14.5-12 101 14.6-8 107 14.8-9 37, 39 14.9 167 14.14 90, 91, 93, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 105, 106 14.14–15.13 94 14.15 165 14.16 104 14.18 105, 108 14.20 17, 90, 91, 93, 97, 98, 105, 107 15.5-6 38 15.6 14 15.7 16, 92 15.8 17, 18

15.9 18, 19 15.10 82 15.10-11 18 15.11 37, 38 15.12 16, 18, 41 15.14-16 48 15.14–16.27 220 15.15-16 221 15.15-19 41 15.15-31 223 15.16 219, 221, 226 15.17 233 15.18 19 15.19 27, 222 15.24 69, 220 15.26-27 69 15.30 14 15.31 20, 220 16.1 17 16.1-27 222 16.3 222 16.5 185 16.7 222 16.9 222 16.19 19 16.20 14 16.23 184 16.26 19, 222 1 Corinthians 1.1 225 1.2 225 1.9 21 1.10-12 194 1.10-13 202 1.12 151, 184, 185, 187 1.13 167, 183 1.13-17 175, 183, 187 1.14-15 184 1.14-16 184 1.14-17 185 1.17 167, 185, 186 1.17–2.5 191 1.18 167 1.23 167 1.24 225 1.29 202 2.2 167 2.6 11, 12 2.8 11, 12, 167 3.3 202 3.10-15 201, 202 3.11-15 233

3.16 193 3.16-17 192, 194, 196, 198, 201 3.17 193, 200, 201 3.21 202 3.23 184 4.7 202 4.8 176 4.8-13 176 4.16-17 92 4.17 21 5.1-8 201 5.1-13 201, 203 5.5 28 5.6 198 5.6-8 190 6.1-8 201 6.1-11 176 6.2 198 6.3 198 6.9 198 6.9-20 201 6.11 167 6.12 202 6.12-20 190, 202 6.13-20 240 6.15 198, 235 6.16 198 6.18 203 6.19 192, 193, 194, 196, 198, 201, 203 7 201 7.12-16 203 7.17 175 7.17-24 130 7.20 175 7.24 176 7.26 21 8–10 103, 107, 201, 252 8.7-11 190 8.7-13 177 8.11 165 9 148 9.1-14 190 9.13 198 9.19-23 176 9.24 198 9.27 240 10.1-22 240 10.11 12, 236 10.13 21 10.14-17 190 10.14-21 240

263

Index of Biblical References 10.14-22 190 10.16 235 10.25 190 10.27-30 190 10.27–11.1 177 11.1 92 11.2 159 11.2–14.40 201 11.23 159 11.23-26 159 12.12-26 190 12.13 176 12.27 235 14.1-25 177 14.24-26 12, 159 15 201 15.1-5 157 15.3-5 157, 160, 165, 168 15.8-9 16 15.10 84 15.12 15 15.13 15 15.20 236 15.21 15 15.22 235 15.24-28 12, 41 15.25-26 12 15.29 183 15.42 15 16.1 21 16.16 185 16.19 185 2 Corinthians 1.7 167 3.6 17, 125 3.14 55, 65 3.15 65 5.1-5 196 5.14 165 5.17 235 5.21 166 6.4 17 6.14–7.1 195, 204 6.15 21 6.16 192, 193, 195, 203 6.16–7.1 196, 203 6.17-18 203 7.1 203 8.14 176 9.2-3 233 9.8 233

10.15-17 233 11.15 17 11.16–12.10 233 11.21–12.10 116 11.23 17 12.20-21 204 13.4 167 13.5 240 Galatians 1–2 147 1.13-14 32 1.13-16 217 1.14 33, 35 1.14-15 34 1.15-16 125 2.6-9 251 2.9 251 2.11-14 107 2.16 31 2.17 17 2.19 235 2.19-20 235 3.1 167 3.3 34 3.9 21 3.13 166 3.19 154 3.21 154 3.23 20 3.25 20 3.27 235 3.28 235 5.2 153, 240 5.4 240 5.11 153, 154, 167 5.16-17 34 5.24 167 6.2 126 6.4 233 6.11-16 130 6.12 154, 167 6.14 167 6.17 167 Ephesians 2.20-22 196 4.18 55 Philippians 1.1 134 1.7 131 1.12 132

264 1.14-15 133 1.14-18 133 1.18–2.5 138 1.19 131 1.20 131, 135 1.27 134, 136 1.27-30 135, 136 1.28 135 1.29 135 2 144 2.1 139 2.1-4 139 2.2 137, 138 2.3 140 2.4 137 2.5 137, 138, 139 2.6 139, 140, 144 2.6-8 139 2.6-11 128, 137, 138, 141, 163 2.7 132, 139, 140, 141 2.8 131, 135, 140, 141, 167 2.9 141, 163 2.13 134 2.19 134 2.22 132 2.25 132 2.28-29 145 2.29 145 3 233 3.1 132

Index of Biblical References 3.2 145 3.3 18, 144 3.3-7 34 3.3-8 130 3.4 130, 144 3.5 144, 225 3.5-7 144 3.5-8 130 3.5-9 131 3.8 131, 144 3.10-11 132 3.11 15 3.11-16 240 3.12-14 134 3.12-16 154 3.13 132 3.17 132, 133, 134, 155 3.18 145, 154, 167 3.18-19 145, 155 3.19 136, 145 3.19-20 135 3.19-21 136 3.20 134, 136, 141, 142, 155 3.20-21 19 3.21 16, 135 4.1 132 4.8 105, 132 4.10 134 4.10-18 141 4.15-18 134

Colossians 1.10 233 1.22-23 240 2.11-12 235 3.9-10 235 4.15 185 1 Thessalonians 1.3 233 1.9 103 1.9-10 27 2.15 150 3.5 240 4.14 150, 167 5.9-10 165 5.21 105 2 Thessalonians 1.7 27 1 Timothy 3.15 196 Philemon 2 185 Hebrews 6.2 183 1 Peter 4.16 252 4.17 196

Index

of

Modern Authors

Aasgaard, R. 192 Abrams, D. 128, 185, 187 Adams, E. 177, 186 Adewuya, J. A. 195 Agnew, F. H. 226 Akenson, D. H. 243, 253 Aletti, J.-N. 32, 215 Allison, D. C. 113 Anderson Capel, J. 121 Anderson, H. 11 Assmann, J. 128 Aune, D. 157, 158, 167 Bachmann, M. 4 Bal, M. 211 Balsdon, J. P. V. D. 174 Barclay, J. M. G. 42, 90, 91, 92, 97, 104, 153, 177 Barnett, P. 203, Barrett, C. K. 151, 225, 227 Barth, K. xi, 20, 25, 27, 210 Bassler, J. M. 36, 153 Bauckham, R. 95, 99 Bauer, K.-A. 28, 29 Beale, G. K. 196, 197 Beard, M. 76 Beck, N. 57 Becker, A. H. 254 Beker, J. C. 115, 216, 224, 236 Bendlin, A. 94, 95 Berge, M. K. 192 Berger, P. 242 Bergey, R. 85 Best, E. 165, 167 Betz, H. D. 166, 167 Beutler, J. 166 Biers, J. 180, 181, 182 Black, M. 56 Blumenfeld, B. 76 Boës, W. 22 Bonda, J. 36, 37 Bonnard, P. 153 Bonz Palmer, M. 76

Bookidis, N. 181, 189 Borgen, P. 65, 157, 158 Bornkamm, G. 34 Boyarin, D. 123 Boys, M. C. 57 Brandenburger, S. 4 Brawley, R. xii, 130, 132, 137, 141 Brenton, L. C. L. 61 Brewer, R. 136 Breytenbach, C. 160 Brown, C. 141 Brown, M. J. 223, 224 Brown, R. 131, Brown, R. E. 247, 248 Bruce, F. F. 167 Bryan, C. 5, 6, 7 Bultmann, R. 34, 158, 161, 162, 215 Burke, P. 128, 131 Burke, T. J. 192 Burkert, W. 200 Byrne, B. 18, 216, 224 Byron, J. 192 Byrskog, S. 221 Cairns, F. 77 Campbell, D. A. 216, 219 Campbell, W. S. 15, 16, 22, 24, 39, 40, 45, 48, 50, 52, 59, 61, 71, 80, 89, 91, 93, 106, 114, 115, 130, 131, 136, 142, 144, 175, 176, 205, 209, 211, 217, 219, 227, 228, 229, 252 Cancik, H. 7, 8 Caraher, W. 184 Carroll, J. 160 Carroll, R. 85 Carter, T. L. 10 Castelli, E. 133, 134, 137 Chancey, M. 115 Cheung, A. T. 190 Chilton, B. 80, 97 Chow, J. K. 184, 187 Clarke, A. D. 183, 184, 187, 194 Clements, R. E. 82

266

Index of Modern Authors

Clifford, R. 82, 83, 84 Cohen, S. J. D. 252, 253 Colenso, J. W. 36 Collange, J.-F. 164 Collins, A. 163 Collins, A. Y. 253 Collins, J. J. 6, 7 Collins, J. N. 10 Collins, R. F. 150, 191, 193 Conzelmann, H. 158, 159, 160 Corbier, M. 104 Coutsoumpos, P. 189, 190 Cranfield, C. E. B. 18, 25, 27, 28, 29, 37, 68, 161, 162, 210, 218, 220, 226, 226, 227 Crossan, J. D. 3, 5, 159 Crouch, D. P. 181 Cullmann, O. 158, 159 Dabelstein, R. 38 Dahl, N. 151, 158, 161, 162, 210 Daniélou, J. 247 Darko, D. K. 198 Daux, G. 181 Davies, W. D. 113, 114, 117, 127 de Boer, W. 133, 134 de Lacey, D. R. 194 Deichgräber, R. 163, 164 Deissmann, A. 4, 80 DeLaine, J. 174 DeMaris, R. 94, 95, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 186, 188 Deschamps, J.-C. 131 Dettwiler, A. 39 deWitt Burton, E. 153 Dickson, J. P. 177 Dodd, B. 141 Dodd, C. H. 29 Doise, W. 131 Donfried, K. P. 41, 149, 150 Doosje, B. 131 Douglas, M. 97, 101, 106 Draper, J. A. 36 Driver, S. R. 85 Dubbnik, J. 98 Dufallo, B. 8 Duling, D. C. 77 Dunn, J. D. G. 20, 26, 29, 36, 37, 68, 90, 92, 97, 114, 120, 153, 159, 161, 162, 164, 166, 176, 218, 219, 220, 224, 226, 230

Eckstein, H.-J. 26, 27 Edart, J.-B. 32 Ehrensperger, K. xiii, 11, 59, 90, 91, 92, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 186 Eisenbaum, P. 20, 100, 104, 105, 106 Ellemers, R. 131 Elliott, N. xiii, 5, 14, 39, 40, 41, 43, 46, 48, 51, 142, 216 Ellis, E. E. 157, 167 Engberg-Pedersen, T. 32, 91, 92, 93, 101, 104, 105, 106, 108 Engels, D. 189 Eriksson, A. 165 Ernst, J. 154 Esler, P. F. 185, 198 Ettl, C. 4 Evans, C. 97 Fagan, G. G. 173, 174, 180, 187 Farmer, W. R. 151 Fay, R. C. 200 Fee, G. D. 160, 163, 193, 194 Feldman, L. H. 88 Ferguson, E. 174 Ferm, R. L. 77 Finamore, S. 25 Finlan, S. 192 Fisher, J. E. 181 Fisher, N. R. E. 29 Fitzmyer, J. A. 13, 18, 19, 27, 33, 68, 80, 81, 84, 164, 194, 218, 220, 225, 226, 227 Flandrin, J. L. 104 Flashar, M. 122 Fletcher-Louis, C. H. T. 25 Fonrobert, C. E. 254 Fotopoulos, J. 123, 158, 182, 190 Fowl, S. 134 Fox, M. V. 199 Fox, R. L. 95 Fraade, S. D. 250 Frankfurter, D. 254 Fredriksen, P. 92, 94, 100, 103, 158, 162, 243, 254 Freedman, D. 142 Friesen, S. J. 177, 189 Fuglseth, K. 65 Furnish, V. P. 34, 159, 165, 166, 167, 195 Gadamer, H.-G. 214 Gager, J. G. 114, 219, 245 Gale, H. M. 192



Index of Modern Authors

Garland, D. E. 185, 190, 201 Gärtner, B. 195 Gaston, L. 114, 121, 210 Gehring, R. W. 177, 184 Georgi, D. 3, 13, 42, 45, 152 Gerhardsson, B. 157, 158, 159 Gibson, J. B. 171 Giles, H. 133 Gnilka, J. 154 Gordon, R. 76 Graf, F. 15 Green, J. 160 Gregory, T. E. 176 Grenholm, C. 56, 57, 71, 87, 209, 210, 229 Gruen, E. S. 76 Guerra, A. J. 80 Gundry, R. H. 33 Haacker, K. 25 Hafemann, S. J. 40, 151, 220 Hagner, D. A. 33 Hall, L. J. 184 Hamerton-Kelly, R. G. 25, 29 Hanson, A. T. 29 Hanson, P. D. 123 Harnisch, W. 149 Harris, H. 244 Harris, M. J. 33, 66, 195 Harrison, S. J. 77 Hartman, L. 167 Haward, C. L. 181 Hawthorne, G. F. 40, 175 Hay, D. 163, 164 Hay, D. M. 40, 91 Hayes, Ch. 97, 100, 101, 103 Hays, R. 114, 115 Headlam, A. C. 55, 67 Heath, M. 77 Heen, E. 140, 144 Heil, J. P. 29 Hellholm, D. 167 Hendrix, H. 142 Hengel, M. 113, 114, 116, 141, 158, 159, 162, 164 Hentschel, A. 10 Héring, J. 139 Herold, G. 27 Heschel, S. 115 Hezer, C. 251 Hibbard, J. T. 56 Hidal, S. 254 Hieke, Th. 4

267

Hill, A. E. 190 Hill, S. 96 Hirshman, M. 250 Hodgson, P. C. 244 Hofius, O. 142 Hogeterp, A. L. A. 192, 197, 201 Hogg, M. 128, 185, 187 Hölkeskamp, K.-J. 20 Holladay, C. 152 Holmberg, B. 198, 245, 246 Hölscher, T. 15 Hooker, M. 134, 163, 164 Horbury, W. 194, 246 Horrell, D. G. 133, 152, 157, 158, 177, 186 Horsley, R. A. 3, 6, 12, 42, 76, 140, 141, 150, 191 Hunter, A. M. 157, 158, 159, 162, 163 Hurtado, L. W. 158, 162, 164 Hvalvik, R. 59, 246, 254 Jassen, A. P. 117, 118, 127 Jeremias, J. 42, 158, 163 Jewett, R. xii, 10, 11, 14, 18, 19, 20, 24, 30, 31, 44, 47, 49, 55, 67, 68, 72, 91, 92, 97, 101, 104, 149, 154, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 177, 184, 216, 219, 221, 224, 225, 226, 227 Johnson, E. E. 40, 91 Johnson Hodge, C. 15, 17, 18, 20 Johnson, T. L. 220 Johnston, D. E. 174 Kaestli, J.-D. 39 Kahl, B. 42 Käsemann, E. xi, 27, 81, 92, 104, 115, 161, 162, 164, 165, 168, 209, 216, 219 224, 227, 247 Kaufmann, J.-C. 128, 129, 131, 134, 136 Keck, L. A. 13, 91, 92, 97, 163, 220, 227 Kempthorne, R. 194 Kent, J. H. 183 Kertelge, K. 166 Kim, J. H. 192 Kirk, A. 170, 171 Klijn, A. F. J. 247, 252 Klostermann, E. 28 Koch, K. 7 Koester, H. 154 Krauter, S. 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12 Kühl, E. 38 Kuss, O. 25

268

Index of Modern Authors

Lagrange, M.-J. 29, 218, 220, 225 Lambrecht, J. 149, 150 Lamsa, G. M. 64 Lanci, J. R. 189, 192, 193, 197, 200, 201 Lanham, C. 57 Lapide, P. 118 Laurence, R. 179 Lee, J.-W. 134 Leenhardt, F. J. 209, 218, 224, 226 Levinas, E. 137 Levinson, B. 127 Levison, J. R. 193, 200, 201 Lim, K. Y. 190, 194, 195 Lohmeyer, E. 138, 159, 164 Longenecker, R. N. 177 Lopez, D. C. 4, 42 Lorenzen, S. 23 Lovering, E. 151 Luckmann, T. 242 Lüdemann, G. 151 Lyons, G. 153 MacDonald, M. Y. 180 Macgregor, G. H. C. 24 MacIntosh, J. 181 Malherbe, A. 150, 165, 167 Malina, B. J. 25, 26, 28, 128, 197, 246, 247 Marchal, J. A. 132, 133, 135, 137, 186 Marcus, J. 141 Marguerat, D. 39 Marshall, P. 184, 187 Martin, R. P. 40, 141, 163, 164, 165, 166, 175 Martyn, J. L. 161, 162, 163, 167 Masson, Ch. 150 May, A. S. 198 May, N. 88 McBride, S. D. 123 McGinn, S. E. 24, 80, 171 McKelvey, R. J. 196 Mell, U. 4 Messing, G. M. 26 Meyer, B. F. 161 Meyer, H. A. W. 29 Meyer Thompson, M. 37 Michel, O. xi, 27, 29, 194 Middleton, P. 91 Miggelbrink, R. 25 Millar, F. 75 Miller, P. A. 8 Miller, P. D. 81, 82, 85, 123 Mitchell, M. M. 151, 194, 201

Momigliano, A. 7, 74, 75 Montanari, M. 104 Montefiore, C. 114, 232, 234 Moo, D. J. 29, 84, 161, 162, 165, 218, 220, 225, 226, 227 Moore, G. F. 114, 232, 245 Moore, R. S. 184 Mor, M. 92 Morris, L. 27, 29 Moule, C. F. D. 24, 151 Moxnes, H. 227 Müller, U. B. 163 Munck, J. 40, 114 Murphy-O’Connor, J. 140, 177, 178, 189, 190 Murray, M. 249 Mussner, F. 37, 121, 153 Nanos, M. D. xiii, 54, 56, 57, 59, 61, 71, 87, 142, 144, 145, 146, 153, 251 Neufeld, D. 184 Neufeld, V. H. 157, 162, 164, 167 Newton, D. 190 Newton, M. 194, 195, 204 Neyrey, J. H. 128, 204 Nguyen, V. H. T. 194 Niehbur, R. 151 Nielsen, I. 179 Nielsen, K. 56 North, J. A. 76 Nygren, A. 210 Oakes, P. 177, 184, 187 Oeming, M. 22 Ogden, D. 94 Økland, J. 186 Olsson, B. 245 Olyan, S. 97, 98 Orlin, E. M. 199 Osiek, C. 163, 180 Paddison, A. 91 Paget, J. C. 246 Papahatzis, N. 189 Parker, R. 94, 95 Pastor, J. 92 Patte, D. xii, 56, 57, 71, 87, 209, 211, 212, 214, 219, 229 Pearson, B. A. 150 Pedley, J. 199, 200 Perrin, N. 77 Pickett, R. 204 Pilch, J. J. 25, 197



Index of Modern Authors

Piper, R. A. 185 Plummer, A. 193, 199 Popkes, W. 28, 29 Porter, S. E. 16, 149, 153, 155, 156, 176, 189, 193, 199 Pratt, M. L. 186 Price, S. R. F. 76 Punt, J. 160 Quint, D. 77 Rahlfs, A. 65 Räisänen, H. 33, 114, 118 Reasoner, M. 85 Reed, J. D. 3, 5 Reed Yoshiko, A. 254 Reichert, A. 16 Reid, D. G. 4, 175 Rengstorf, K. H. 66 Reumann, J. 154 Revell, L. 179, 180 Ricoeur, P. 135, 212 Riegel, S. K. 247 Rigaux, B. 150 Robertson, A. 193, 199 Robinson, J. A. 55, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67 Robinson, T. A. 243 Roebuck, C. 182 Roetzel, C. J. xii, 27, 103, 113, 115, 116, 119, 123, 220 Rohrbaugh, R. L. 28 Rosner, B. S. 190 Rowland, C. 25, 78 Ruether Radford, R. 39 Sanday, W. 55, 68 Sanders, E. P. 39, 114, 115, 229, 230, 232, 234, 236, 238, 239, 245, 246 Sänger, D. 4 Saunders, R. 176 Savage, T. B. 194 Schäfer, P. 53, 54, 55, 63, 64 Schlatter, A. 220, 225, 226, 227 Schlier, H. 95, 96 Schmidt, K. L. 53, 54, 55, 63, 64 Schmidt, U. 129 Schmitdt, M. A. 53, 54, 55, 63, 64 Schmithals, W. 150, 151, 167 Schnabel, E. J. 184 Schoonhoven, C. R. 24 Schottroff, L. 3 Schowalter, D. N. 177, 189, 191 Schrage, W. 12

269

Schreiner, T. R. 26 Schweitzer, A. 114, 115, 116, 219, 232, 233, 234, 237, 238 Schweitzer, F. 5 Schwier, H. 7 Scott, J. C. 5, 87, 88 Scott, J. M. 10 Scullard, H. H. 75 Seeley, D. 171, 172 Segovia, F. F. 12 Seland, T. 157, 158, 167 Sellew, P. 123 Sellin, G. 150 Serpe, R. 128, 131 Setzer, C. 123 Shanor, J. 201 Shelton, J.-A. 249 Sievers, J. 57 Simon, M. 243 Skarsaune, O. 246, 254 Skarsten, R. 64 Slee, M. 249, 253 Slingerland, H. D. 75 Smith, J. P. 64 Smth, M. 113 Smyth, H. W. 26, 27 Snyder, G. F. 196 Soderlund, S. K. 37 Spawforth, A. J. S. 178 Spears, R. 131 Spinks, B. D. 173, 174 Spitaler, P. 14, 30, 59 Standhartinger, A. 5 Stanley, C. D. 80 Stanley, D. M. 37 Stegemann, E. W. xiii, 3, 11, 14, 22 Stendah, K. 39, 68, 114, 210, 217, 219 Still, T. D. 177 Stommel, E. 173, 174, 175 Stowers, S. K. 20, 31, 45, 47, 48, 115, 216, 219, 245, 250 Strathmann, H. 136 Strecker, C. 4, 20, 21 Stryker, S. 128, 131 Stuhlmacher, P. 25, 158, 161, 162, 218, 220, 224, 227 Sugirtharajah, R. S. 12 Sumney, J. L. xiii, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152 Swanson, R. 63, 64 Sykes, S. W. 161 Synofzik, E. 24 Tajfel, H. 131, 133, 178, 185, 198

270

Index of Modern Authors

Talmon, S. 123 Tasker, R. V. G. 24 Tatum, G. 115 Taubes, J. 253 Taylor, J. E. 246, 252 Tellbe, M. 3, 5, 13, 246, 253 Thatcher, T. 170 Thayer, J. H. 54, 55, 68 Theobald, M. 26 Thiselton, A. C. 176, 193, 202 Thom, J. C. 160 Thrall, M. E. 195 Thurston, B. 163 Toews, J. E. 224 Tomlinson, R. A. 181 Tsang, S. 192 Tucker, J. B. xiii, 105, 173, 174, 178, 184, 185, 186, 187, 191, 198 Tuckett, C. M. 152, 157, 158 Tulloch, J. H. 180 Turcan, R. 249 Turner, J. 131, 178, 198 Turner, V. 135 Udoh, F. E. 94, 115 Ulrichsen, J. H. 157, 158, 167 Vahrenhorst, M. 95, 96 Van de Sandt, H. 250 van der Horst, P. W. 72 van Knippenberg, A. 131 Vanhoye, A. 199 Vermes, G. 118 Vollenweider, S. 140 von Bendenmann, R. 4, 9, 12 Wacholder, B. Z. 113, 117 Wagner, J. R. 54, 56, 90 Wallace, D. 5

Wallace-Hadrill, A. 7, 8, 9 Walters, J. C. 177 Wardle, T. S. 196 Watson, F. 33, 153, 165, 169 Welborn, L. L. 9, 93 Wendell, K. 91 Wengst, K. 18, 26 Wessels, G. F. 160 West, A. B. 183 Whitaker, E. C. 174 White, J. L. 44 Wiefel, W. 41 Wilckens, U. 25, 27 Wilk, F. 54, 56, 90 Wilkins, J. M. 96 Williams, D. J. 192, 193 Williams, S. K. 158, 161 Williams II, C. K. 176, 181, 189 Willis, W. L. 190 Wills, T. M. 102 Winter, B. W. 178, 190, 191, 194 Wiseman, J. 179, 181, 182 Witherington III, B. 25, 43, 185 Wohl, B. L. 181 Wrede, W. 232, 234 Wright, N. T. 4, 5, 37, 42, 161, 163, 165 Wuellner, W. 198, 199 Yegül, F. 174, 179, 180, 181, 187 Yeo, K. K. 36 Yong, F. Y. 190 Zahn, Th. 15, 29, 38 Zajac, N. 174, 178 Zangenberg, J. 250 Zanker, P. 79 Zetterholm, M. xiii, 242, 243, 245, 249, 250, 251, 252 Zoccali, Ch. 59