Paul Within Judaism

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how how historical developments in the early centuries of Christianity left us reading the New Testament in ways that were fragmented, missing its original framework. Last week, I said that the solution to that problem involves reading the New Testament not as a set of Christian texts with a Jewish background, but as internal Jewish texts that express a particular set of beliefs within Judaism. This idea raises some important questions, not least of which is how such a reading should interpret Paul. Today, I'll show you why we should read Paul, like the rest of the New Testament, within Judaism.

Much of Paul's writing was aimed at refuting competing views advanced by other Jews within the nascent Jesus movement. The Kingdom had come, and up until Peter's interaction with Cornelius in Acts 10, it had been an entirely Jewish Kingdom. The inclusion of gentiles into that Kingdom was nothing less than the fulfillment of messianic prophecy (Acts 15:16-18). This was a major development. As the Apostle to the gentiles, one of Paul's main concerns was how the gentiles fit in and related to the covenants God had made with Israel. Paul's opponents taught that gentile believers needed to formally become Jews through circumcision in order to be part of God's covenant people (Acts 15:1, 5). This amounted to a denial that the prophecies alluded to in Acts 15 had been fulfilled, and arguably a denial of Jesus' identity as Messiah. Paul argued that conversion was not necessary, that the gentiles were already "fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (Ephesians 3:6). For gentiles to accept conversion for the sake of becoming fellow heirs was to deny that Jesus had already made them fellow heirs. The argument was internal to both Judaism and the Jesus movement, which was still very Jewish at the time. Professor Krister Standahl explains:

...it is quite natural that at least one of the centers of gravity in Paul's thought should be how to define the place for Gentiles in the Church, according to the plan of God. ... This problem was, however, not a live one after the end of the first century, when Christianity for all practical purposes had a non-Jewish constituency. Yet it was not until Augustine that the Pauline thought about the Law and justification was applied in a consistent and grand style to a more general and timeless human problem. (Stendahl, 1976)

If you've been following along for the last couple weeks, you know that within a few generations of the Apostles, institutional Christianity had, broadly speaking, taken an anti-Jewish turn. Early in the fourth century, Canon 50 of the Council of Alvira forbade Christians from eating with Jews. John Chrysostom, a contemporary of Augustine said of the Jews, "Although such beasts are unfit for work, they are fit for killing. And this is what happened to the Jews: while they were making themselves unfit for work, they grew fit for slaughter."

The writings we know collectively as the New Testament were originally penned within a broader Jewish conversation, but in the wake of these developments, the Church was left to interpret them without the benefit of a broader Jewish framework. Paul's letters are especially challenging, because we are also missing much of their immediate context in the form of further correspondence directly referenced by Paul, but lost to us (1 Corinthians 5:9, 7:1; 2 Corinthians 2:3-4).

By the time of Augustine, the Church no longer understood Paul as a Jew arguing with other Jews about the theology of gentile inclusion, but as a convert from Judaism arguing against his former religion. Situated outside and against Judaism, Paul's words take on a very different meaning than the Apostle intended. Professor Pamela Eisenbaum summarizes:

Paul’s Judaism was understood by Augustine, and therefore by Western Christianity after him, as an inferior religious option that Paul subsequently rejected when he became a Christian. Much of what Paul says in his letters was thereby construed as a critique of Judaism per se, because Paul’s religious transformation was perceived to have involved the discovery of what was essentially wrong with Judaism. Embracing Jesus meant embracing Christianity, and embracing Christianity necessitated the concomitant rejection of Judaism, where Judaism is the stand-in for the wrong form of religious expression in general. (Eisenbaum, 2009, p.47)

This is the "traditional" view: that Judaism embodied "wrong" religion, that Paul left Judaism to teach Christianity as an answer to and replacement for Jewish religion. Augustine and those who followed him are not to blame for this misunderstanding. It was the inevitable result of interpreting a Jewish writer without the benefit of a Jewish worldview. Situating Paul's writings back into their Jewish context is vital to understanding the New Testament.

I wrote that the religion of Jesus and the disciples was Judaism. The same is true of Paul. Even though his audience consisted mostly of gentiles, Paul himself remained "unambiguously Jewish—ethnically, culturally, religiously, morally, and theologically" (Eisenbaum, 2009. p.9). While his readers weren't Jews, what he taught was also unambiguously Jewish. Professor Anders Runesson says:

Over the years, I have become convinced that, if our aim is to conjure up a historical Paul based on the letters he wrote, and if we proceed with this project through placing him in a historical and institutional first-century, pre-Rabbinic socio-religious context, then what emerges from the shadows of the past is a Jew proclaiming a Jewish understanding of redemption to non-Jews as divine judgment awaits them around the corner; a Judaism for gentiles to save the world. (Runesson, 2022)

Paul rightly called out false teaching within Judaism, but he did so as a Jew for the sake of the Jewish faith, just as a Christian might call out false teaching within the Church in order to strengthen and protect the Church. When we understand Paul in his original context, we too will be strengthened.

Sources

Chrysostom, John. Discourses against Judaizing Christians, trans. Paul W. Harkins, vol. 68, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1979).

Eisenbaum, Pamela. Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle. HarperCollins, 2009.

Runesson, Anders. Judaism for Gentiles: Reading Paul Beyond the Parting of the Ways Paradigm. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 494. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1628/978-3-16-161996-0.

Stendahl, Krister. "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West" in Paul Among Jews and Gentiles. Fortress Press, 1976.