Law and Ethics in Early Judaism and the New Testament (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament) 9783161551338, 9783161556692, 3161551338

Table of contents :
Cover
Titel
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction: Old Skins, New Wine
Chapter 2: Law in Early Judaism
Chapter 3: Torah, nomos, and Law: A Question of “Meaning”
Chapter 4: Paul’s Anthropological “Pessimism” in its Jewish Context
Chapter 5: Four Maccabees: A Paraenetic Address?
Chapter 6: Law in the New Testament
Chapter 7: Law and Gospel in Jesus and Paul
Chapter 8: Jesus, the Pharisees, and the Application of Divine Law
Chapter 9: Hearing the Gospels of Matthew and Mark
Chapter 10: Pragmatism and the Gospel Tradition
Chapter 11: The “New Perspective” at Twenty-Five
Chapter 12: Finnish Contribution to the Debate on Paul and the Law
Chapter 13: The Righteousness of the Law and the Righteousness of Faith in Romans
Chapter 14: Paul and the Law in Romans 9–11
Chapter 15: On Fulfilling the Whole Law (Gal 5:14)
Chapter 16: The Law and the Just Person (1 Tim 1:3–11)
Chapter 17: Letter and Spirit: The Foundation of Pauline Ethics
Chapter 18: Righteousness, Cosmic and Microcosmic
Chapter 19: St. Paul and Knowledge of the Natural Law
Chapter 20: The Judaism Paul Left Behind Him
Chapter 21: Is Nothing Sacred? Holiness in the Writings of Paul
Chapter 22: Canonical Paul and the Law
Indexes

Citation preview

Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Herausgeber / Editor Jörg Frey (Zürich) Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) · James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala) Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL) · Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg) J. Ross Wagner (Durham, NC)

383

Stephen Westerholm

Law and Ethics in Early Judaism and the New Testament

Mohr Siebeck

Stephen Westerholm, born 1949, studied at University of Toronto (BA, MA) and Lund University (ThD); Professor of Early Christianity in the Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University; since 2017, Professor Emeritus.

ISBN 978-3-16-155133-8 eISBN 978-3-16-155669-2 ISSN 0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb. dnb.de. © 2017 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany. www.mohr.de This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproduction, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by epline in Böblingen, printed by Gulde-Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Großbuchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany

‫‪For Monica‬‬

‫יברכך יהוה וישמרך‬

Table of Contents Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX Chapter 1: Introduction: Old Skins, New Wine  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Chapter 2: Law in Early Judaism  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Chapter 3: Torah, nomos, and Law: A Question of “Meaning”  . . . . . 39 Chapter 4: Paul’s Anthropological “Pessimism” in its Jewish Context  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Chapter 5: Four Maccabees: A Paraenetic Address?  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Chapter 6: Law in the New Testament  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Chapter 7: Law and Gospel in Jesus and Paul  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Chapter 8: Jesus, the Pharisees, and the Application of Divine Law  . . 145 Chapter 9: Hearing the Gospels of Matthew and Mark  . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Chapter 10: Pragmatism and the Gospel Tradition  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Chapter 11: The “New Perspective” at Twenty-Five  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Chapter 12: Finnish Contribution to the Debate on Paul and the Law  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Chapter 13: The Righteousness of the Law and the Righteousness of Faith in Romans  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Chapter 14: Paul and the Law in Romans 9–11  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Chapter 15: On Fulfilling the Whole Law (Gal 5:14)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

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Chapter 16: The Law and the Just Person (1 Tim 1:3–11)  . . . . . . . . . . 297 Chapter 17: Letter and Spirit: The Foundation of Pauline Ethics  . . . . 315 Chapter 18: Righteousness, Cosmic and Microcosmic  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 Chapter 19: St. Paul and Knowledge of the Natural Law  . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Chapter 20: The Judaism Paul Left Behind Him  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Chapter 21: Is Nothing Sacred? Holiness in the Writings of Paul  . . . . 385 Chapter 22: Canonical Paul and the Law  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413

Acknowledgements Apart from the opening, introductory chapter and Chapter 10, each chapter in this book has appeared in a previous publication, as listed below, and appears in this volume with the kind permission of the publishers. 2. “Law in Early Judaism,” in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 3. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008, 587–594. Copyright © 2008 by Abingdon Press, an imprint of The United Methodist Publishing House. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 3. “Torah, Nomos, and Law: A Question of ‘Meaning,’” in Studies in Religion 15 (1986): 327–336. Used by permission. 4. “Paul’s Anthropological ‘Pessimism’ in its Jewish Context,” in Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, edited by John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole. London: T. & T. Clark International, 2006, 71–98. Used by permission of Bloomsbury Publish­ing Plc. 5. “Four Maccabees: A Paraenetic Address?” in Early Christian Paraenesis in Context, edited by T. Engberg-Pedersen and James Starr. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004, 191–216. 6. “Law in the New Testament,” in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 3. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008, 594–602. Copyright © 2008 by Abingdon Press, an imprint of The United Methodist Publishing House. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 7. “Law and Gospel in Jesus and Paul,” in Jesus and Paul Reconnected: Fresh Pathways into an Old Debate, edited by Todd D. Still. Grand ­Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007, 19–36. Reprinted by permission of the publisher; all rights reserved. 8. “Jesus, the Pharisees, and the Application of Divine Law,” in Eglise et Théologie 13 (1982): 191–210. Used by permission. 9. “Hearing the Gospels of Matthew and Mark,” in Mark and Matthew II: Comparative Readings: Reception History, Cultural Hermeneutics, and Theology, edited by Eve-Marie Becker and Anders Runesson. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013, 245–258. Copyright © Mohr Siebeck Tübingen. Used by permission. 10. “Pragmatism and the Gospel Tradition.” Unpublished paper, given at the first annual meeting of the International Reference Library for Biblical Research, Fort Worth, Texas, March 2006. 11. “The ‘New Perspective’ at Twenty-Five,” in Justification and Variegated ­Nomism. Vol. 2: The Paradoxes of Paul, edited by D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004, 1–38. Copyright © Mohr Siebeck Tübingen. Used by permission. 12. “Finnish Contributions to the Debate on Paul and the Law,” in The Nordic Paul: Finnish Approaches to Pauline Theology, edited by Lars Aejmelaeus and

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Antti Mustakallio. London: T & T Clark International, 2008, 3–15. Used by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. 13. “The Righteousness of the Law and the Righteousness of Faith in Romans,” in Interpretation 58 (2004): 253–264. Used by permission. 14. “Paul and the Law in Romans 9–11,” in Paul and the Mosaic Law, edited by James D. G. Dunn. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1996, 215–237. Copyright © Mohr Siebeck Tübingen. Used by permission. 15. “On Fulfilling the Whole Law (Gal. 5:14),” in Svensk Exegetisk Arsbok 51–52 (1986–87): 229–237. Used by permission. 16. “The Law and the ‘Just Man’ (1 Tim 1,3–11),” in Studia Theologica 36 (1982): 79–95. Copyright © Studia Theologica, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd., www.tandfonline on behalf of Studia Theologica. 17. “Letter and Spirit: The Foundation of Pauline Ethics,” in New Testament Studies 30 (1984): 229–248. 18. “Righteousness, Cosmic and Microcosmic,” in Apocalyptic Paul: Cosmos and Anthropos in Romans 5–8, edited by Beverly Roberts Gaventa. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2013, 21–38. Used by permission of Baylor University Press. 19. “St. Paul and Knowledge of the Natural Law,” in Journal of Law, Philosophy and Culture 3 (2009): 433–444. Used by permission. 20. “The Judaism Paul Left Behind Him,” in The Making of Christianity: Conflicts, Contacts, and Constructions: Essays in Honor of Bengt Holmberg, edited by M. Zetterholm and S. Byrskog. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012, 353–370. Used by permission. 21. “Is Nothing Sacred? Holiness in the Writings of Paul,” in Purity, Holiness, and Identity in Judaism in Christianity: Essays in Memory of Susan Haber, edited by Carl S. Ehrlich, Anders Runesson, and Eileen Schuller. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013, 87–99. Copyright © Mohr Siebeck Tübingen. Used by permission. 22. “Canonical Paul and the Law,” in Torah Ethics and Early Christian Identity, edited by Susan J. Wendel and David M. Miller. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016, 207–222. Reprinted by permission of the publisher; all rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Old Skins, New Wine Pious Jews of the first century, as later, sought to conform their lives to Torah, the law God had given Israel.1 Differences in circumstance and temperament meant that some Jews displayed more zeal in the attempt than others (cf. Gal 1:14). Different sects among them interpreted the law, and assigned competence in its interpretation, differently.2 The pursuit itself, however, was a common one – so common that it invited hypocritical imitation, as the Synoptic Gospels are wont to point out. Yet the New Testament itself bears witness to the nobility of the endeavor: Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were “both righteous in the sight of God, blameless as they walked in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord” (Luke 1:5–6). Proper observance of commandments presupposes their proper interpretation. In Jesus and Scribal Authority, I noted that the Pharisees understood the prescriptions of Torah as “statutes.”3 The precise wording with which advice, or even a command, is given may not be significant; that of a statute always is. If Deuteronomy 24:1 speaks of a divorce occasioned by “a matter of indecency,” then what, for the Pharisees, constituted legitimate grounds for divorce hinged on the definition of “indecency.” If Exodus 16:29 forbids leaving one’s “place” on the Sabbath, then those concerned not to transgress this statute needed to know how “place” was rightly construed. The rabbinic term halakhah may be used to designate efforts directed toward clarifying the ambiguities of Mosaic law so understood, filling in gaps left by its legislation, perhaps even making its observance practicable in circumstances changed from the time when the laws were given. The goal was to be as concrete and exhaustive as required to ensure compliance with the statutes of God’s law; indeed, to prevent their transgression by constructing a “fence” around Torah’s commandments wide enough to avert unwitting infringement (cf. m. Avot 1:1). First-century Jews that they were, neither Jesus nor Paul could articulate their vision of what God was doing in their day without dealing with issues raised by its relation to God’s prior revelation in Torah. They fully affirmed 1 

See chapter 3 below. See chapter 2 below. 3  See also chapter 8 below. 2 

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that prior revelation. Still, the primary focus of both Jesus and Paul was on what God was doing in their day; to assess the legitimacy of their message merely by measuring it against the standard of some current understanding of Torah was to judge new wine by what it did to old wineskins. Decisive for one’s relation to God – for Jesus, Paul, and, indeed, all the authors of the New Testament – was one’s response to the good news of Jesus Christ. Scholars of the New Testament must seek to do justice both to what was new and distinctive about the message of Jesus and his followers, and to the wide areas of continuity it shared with the convictions and practices of other pious Jews. If scholarship of earlier generations tended to emphasize the new while overlooking – if not denying – its continuity with the old, the pendulum, in our day, has perhaps swung to the other extreme. The chapters that follow represent my own attempts, over three decades and more, to rightly portray what was new and what was not, while fairly portraying the Judaism within which the new movement began. Anyone who would consider Jesus’ message of God’s kingdom and its relation to Torah is immediately confronted by the question where Jesus’ views can reliably be found. In my dissertation, I took up the challenge of demonstrating the plausible authenticity of particular sayings attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels.4 I now regard such attempts as largely (perhaps not completely) pointless: to this day, however sophisticated the argumentation, scholars, in the end, tend to find authentic whatever agrees with their overall understanding of Jesus, secondary whatever does not. Broadly speaking, I believe we must concede Dale Allison’s point: either we trust the general picture that the Synoptic Gospels give us of Jesus – or we abandon the attempt to speak of him at all. If the primary sources produce false general impressions, … then the truth of things is almost certainly beyond our reach. If the chief witnesses are too bad, if they contain only intermittently authentic items, we cannot lay them aside and tell a better story. … Because the Synoptics supply us with most of our first-century traditions, our reconstructed Jesus will inevitably be Synoptic-like, a sort of commentary on Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Nothing else, however, can carry conviction.5

I am, however, more optimistic than some about particular sayings.6 Jesus was known as one who taught “in parables” (ἐν παραβολαῖς, Matt 13:34; cf. 4  Jesus and Scribal Authority. I assumed the results of that study in the article reproduced in chapter 8 below. 5 Allison, Historical Christ, 66. 6 In what follows, I repeat points made by my doctoral supervisor, Birger Gerhardsson, most convincingly – to my mind – in Gerhardsson, Reliability. In the writings collected in that volume, Gerhardsson provides, in addition to a fine restatement of his position, responses to the objections most frequently raised to his approach – which neither posits that the gospel tradition was transmitted according to a specifically



Introduction: Old Skins, New Wine

3

Mark 4:33–34; the Hebrew term is ‫משל׳ם‬, meshalim – the content of our book of Proverbs). The term included carefully (i. e., memorably) formulated one-liners as well as the illustrative short stories traditionally labeled “parables” in English. That the Synoptic Gospels sum up the teaching of Jesus on any number of important issues in concise, pregnant sayings is thus no accident (e. g., Mark 2:17, 27; 7:15; 8:35; 10:9, 25; 12:17).7 Sayings of this type were deliberately formulated to facilitate recollection: proverbs, proverbially, are not occasional, one-time utterances. And what are we to expect of disciples of one who taught in meshalim but that they retain and pass on their master’s pithy wisdom?8 Furthermore, the New Testament supplies ample evidence of the intentional preservation and transmission of Jesus tradition.9 It stands to reason, then, that behind programmatic sayings in the Synoptic Gospels there typically lie pronouncements of the historical Jesus. Be that as it may, I shall be content in what follows to depict the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels – though, for the reasons just stated, I believe that what I say is also true of the Jesus of history. Four points about these Gospels’ general picture of Jesus merit attention here. 1. Jesus saw in his own activity the dawning of the kingdom of God. Jews knew in their bones, and their prophets had assured them, that in a world where much had gone wrong, God would some day put things right.10 Jesus saw, in his activity, the unprepossessing beginnings of that process, the tiny mustard seed that would one day grow into something mighty (Mark 4:30– 32). Where the Synoptics summarize Jesus’ message, the dawning kingdom is the theme (Mark 1:14–15; Matt 4:17; 10:7; Luke 10:9, 11). Terms of admission to the kingdom are the subject of numerous pronouncements (Matt 5:3, 20; 7:21; 18:3; 19:23–24, etc.). Its mysteries are the subject of Jesus’ parables (Matt 13:1–52; 18:23–35; 20:1–16, etc.). Its powers are displayed in his mighty works (Matt 12:28). “The time [had] come,” and it was incumbent rabbinic model nor is invalidated by the truism that particular sayings are reproduced somewhat differently in the different Gospels. 7  Such sayings were transmitted and recalled even when the context in which they were originally spoken was forgotten; the process can lead to an obscuring of their original point, as noted in chapter 10. In general, however, sayings proverbial in nature require no context for their understanding – and this surely applies to the meshalim of Jesus listed above. 8 The intentionality of the process renders moot questions of what, in general, hearers might recall of something spoken in their presence decades earlier. Chapter 10 below argues against the common assumption that perceived needs of the community inevitably shaped or determined what was transmitted. 9  E. g., 1 Cor 11:23; 15:3. Indirect evidence for intentional preservation is given in chapter 10 below. 10  Cf. chapter 14 below.

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upon all who encountered Jesus to respond to the good news with faith (Mark 1:15). 2. Jesus saw in his mission the climax of the divine activity in Israel’s past as recorded in its scriptures, and the start of the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes: “Today this scripture is fulfilled as you hear it” (Luke 4:21). 3. Jesus acted in ways that invited the easy dismissal most concisely formulated in John 9:16: “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” Matthew 5:17 is clearly intended as a response to the same perception, and numerous accounts in the Gospels, while meant to counter the charge, at the same time provide evidence of the activity that provoked it. In the eyes of many of his contemporaries, Jesus at times acted in violation of God’s law. Indeed, his association with the notoriously immoral suggested a general contempt for “morality” (to use our term; among first-century Jews, morality meant Torah). 4. For Jesus, earlier stages in the history of God’s people, including the revelation given to Moses on Mount Sinai, must be interpreted in light of the new and decisive moment in salvation history, not the other way around. Something greater than wise figures of the past, the prophets, even the temple was here (Matt 12:6, 41–42). What prophets and righteous people had longed for could now be seen and heard (Matt 13:17). The period of anticipation represented by “the law and the prophets” had given way to the proclamation of God’s kingdom (Matt 11:11–13; Luke 16:16). Whatever tensions arose between old revelations and the new must therefore be attributed to the partial nature of past revelation and its transcendence in the day of fulfillment. With full authority, Jesus, herald and inaugurator of God’s kingdom, declared God’s will. Our concern here is with the ethical teaching of Jesus – and thus, necessarily, with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7).11 Any suggestion that Jesus meant to do away with Torah is emphatically denied; yet to speak of the law’s “fulfillment” suggests something more than the mere reaffirmation of its commands (5:17).12 Indeed, according to Matthew 5:20, it is not the inevitable transgressions of those committed to the law’s observance that prevent their entry to God’s kingdom; their very righteousness falls short. And, in the Sermon’s antitheses, certain stipulations of Torah are declared inadequate statements of God’s will.13 Here, as elsewhere in the 11  In what follows, I draw upon my article “Law in the Sermon on the Mount”; cf. also my Understanding Matthew. 12  See chapter 15 below. That πληρῶσαι (“fulfill”) includes an element of transcendence is rightly insisted upon by Davies and Allison, Matthew 1.486–487; cf. 1.507–509. 13  The first, second, and sixth of the antitheses (5:21–22, 27–28, 43–45), though in-



Introduction: Old Skins, New Wine

5

Gospels, the relationship between Jesus’ teaching and Torah is, I believe, a good deal more complex than is at times realized. Attempts to capture its essence need at least to take the following observations into account. 1. The Sermon on the Mount represents Jesus’ expectations of how those who would have a part in God’s kingdom are to live. Negatively, this means that the sermon is not intended as a blueprint for reforming the laws or institutions of current society.14 It is assumed throughout that Jesus’ followers are and will remain a minority group subject to persecution (5:10–12) and abuse (5:39–40), living alongside scribes and Pharisees, tax collectors and Gentiles – all of whom live differently than they, but among whom they are to serve as “salt” and “light” (5:13–16, 45–47; 6:1–18, 32). Positively, Jesus’ disciples must be “doers,” not mere “hearers,” of Jesus’ words if they are to enter the kingdom (7:21–27). 2. That Torah, unlike the teaching of Jesus, served as the law of an earthly society is no doubt the reason why Jesus can find a number of its stipulations inadequate statements of God’s will without questioning their divine origin.15 Deuteronomy’s provisions for divorce represented a concession to human hardheartedness, not God’s intention for the humans he created (so Matt 19:3–9; cf. 5:31–32). The same explanation presumably applies to stipulations in Torah related to oaths and the lex talionis (5:33–42): among hardhearted human beings, something was achieved by stressing, through oaths, the necessity of truth-telling at least in certain situations, and by restricting the natural desire for revenge. The laws of Torah served that limited purpose. But truth-telling is always to be the norm for God’s children; and they are to respond to whatever abuse or demands they encounter, not with lawful self-assertion, but with expressions of God’s goodness and generosity. 3. It is true that those who, following Jesus’ teaching, are faithful in marriage, avoid oaths, and seek no revenge are not thereby transgressing Torah’s commands. Crucially, however, those who punctiliously comply with Torah’s provisions related to divorce, oaths, and the lex talionis fall short of doing God’s will – as proclaimed by Jesus.16 Jesus does not abolish Torah; indeed, troduced as contrasts between what was said of old and what Jesus demands, can be understood as a “spiritualizing” or intensifying of Torah’s own commands. The third, fourth, and fifth antitheses (5:31–32, 33–37, 38–42) do not permit the latter understanding. See the discussion below. 14  See chapter 8 below. 15  Daube, “Concessions,” points out that concessions to sinfulness were a recognized feature in Jewish law. The point of the Sermon is that, in the kingdom of God, there can be neither place nor need for such concessions. 16 Jesus’ position in these matters is not that of those who “made a fence around

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if the essence of Torah is the demand for God-pleasing behavior, then the teaching of Jesus can be said to intend Torah’s “fulfillment.” Still, in the teaching of Jesus, the claim of various provisions of Torah to represent the righteous behavior God requires is clearly relativized. 4. Jesus finds fit for the kingdom, on grounds patently other than observance of the law, people whom society of the day regarded as particularly sinful (Matt 21:31–32; cf. Luke 7:36–50; 18:9–14; 19:1–10); and though, in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere in the Gospels, he demands of his followers boundless love, absolute purity, complete truthfulness, and utter self-denial, neither in the Sermon nor elsewhere are they told to observe the Sabbath or laws of tithing and ritual purity. Those who strictly observe the latter commandments are not faulted for doing so (cf. Matt 23:23; Luke 11:42); but their priorities are said to be skewed (Matt 9:13; 12:7; 23:23–24; Luke 11:42), and their zeal in condemning transgressors of norms in these areas is seen as misplaced (Mark 2:23–28; 3:1–6; 7:1–23, etc.). 5. Jesus’ stance throughout is not that of a mere interpreter of an authoritative law code, bound to its wording in his definition of what is right. Rather, in spelling out what God requires of those who would enter his kingdom, Jesus speaks with the same authority as the law itself: an authority that demands recognition without obvious legitimation (Mark 8:11–13; 11:27–33). Of those who would enter the kingdom, he repeatedly makes demands that go far beyond Torah’s statutes (as the “rich young ruler” found to his dismay [Mark 10:17–22]).17 Among Torah’s provisions, he sees in some, but not others, an adequate statement of God’s will. Without pausing to construe what “work” Torah forbids on the Sabbath or what “matter of indecency” it sees as grounds for divorce, he finds it “lawful” to “do good” on the Sabbath (Mark 3:4), and declares, “What God has joined together, let no mere mortal put asunder” (Mark 10:9). 6. In form no less than content, Jesus’ own statements of God’s will are far removed from the halakhic endeavors of the Pharisees. As he conveys the message of the kingdom largely in parables, so the requirements of the kingdom are typically expressed in dramatic, poetic form, where the expectation is rather that disciples will show and act in accordance with the attitude illustrated in Jesus’ command than that they will attempt to comply with its wording.18 Literalists will miss the point of Matthew 6:6 if they refuse to Torah.” The latter, assuming that commandments in Torah represented the divine will, attempted to guard against their transgression. Jesus’ point is that conformity with certain of those commandments falls short of God’s will. 17  See chapter 7 below. 18  Cf. Dodd, Gospel and Law, 46–63.



Introduction: Old Skins, New Wine

7

pray anywhere but in their rooms. They will be hard put to know how they can keep one hand from being aware of what the other is doing, or what logs are to be removed from their eyes (6:3; 7:5). Their self-congratulation that at least they have never thrown pearls to pigs will be premature (7:6). Yet, though Jesus’ ethical teaching represents the opposite extreme from halakhic endeavors to define boundaries of proper behavior with maximum concreteness and comprehensiveness, it is not, for that reason, less serious, as any sensitive reader of the Sermon will attest. Why the difference? East of Eden, after all, society does need laws – and laws need to be specific if they are to be enforced. Ideally, society’s laws serve both to restrain evil and to inculcate virtuous behavior; society is the better where its laws are good and wise. Still, in the end, true goodness, the goodness at home in God’s kingdom, though expressed in ways no law would condemn (cf. Gal 5:23), is not the same thing as careful compliance with rules.19 Labored compliance, while a vast improvement over unprincipled living, falls far short of the spontaneous selflessness and concern for others, the uncalculating generosity and kindness, the unstinting love of God and all his creatures that ought to mark God’s children. Such goodness is related to joy, thankfulness, appreciativeness – though none of these qualities necessarily accompanies the most fervent strivings for selfdiscipline and virtue. It corresponds, rather, to the innocence of Eden, the fruit of genuine, unselfconscious delight in the goodness of God and his creation. That innocence (Genesis tells us) was lost when God’s creatures chose to pursue their own perceived good rather than play their part in a divinely ordered cosmos; and innocence, once lost, cannot be recovered. Divine purposes were served (“for the hardness of your hearts”) when God gave his law to the most privileged of his wayward creatures; but no law could make them good. A tree must be good before it can produce good fruit (Matt 12:33): something of the power and goodness of God’s kingdom must be experienced before its righteousness can be expressed. The Sermon on the Mount must not be detached from the message of God’s kingdom, the announcement of whose coming it follows (Matt 4:17). Jesus, who announces the coming of the kingdom, speaks with authority of the righteousness required of those who would enter it: it is new age righteousness, though meant to be practiced even now, under old age conditions, by the children of the kingdom. Jesus portrays such righteousness, not by exhaustively listing concrete rules to be scrupulously adhered to, but by illustrating the kind of attitude and action that mark children learning to imitate their heavenly Father (5:45–48; 6:1–18, 32). 19 Cf. Knox, Ethic of Jesus, 103–108; also his moving portrayal of the difference between a servant’s and a son’s obedience, 82–86.

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There are parallels in Paul:20 the conviction that the law, though divine, was too “weak” to produce God-pleasing behavior in sinful human beings (Rom 8:3); that the law served a limited purpose in the age of anticipation;21 that God-pleasing behavior can only follow from experience of the power and goodness of the new age – in Paul’s terms, the gift of God’s Spirit (Rom 8:4; Gal 5:22–23); that those who belong to the new age know and approach God as their Father (Rom 8:14–16; Gal 4:4–7). Most importantly, it was the arrival of the new age (for Paul, with the death and resurrection of Christ) that was the focus of Paul’s message, as it had been that of Jesus; the law became a factor for the apostle only when he encountered those who would impose old age requirements on those who were a part of the new creation.22 To this day, their number continues to grow. The titles of a striking number of recent articles and books breathlessly announce to a world suspected of thinking otherwise that Paul was a Jew. The works in question regularly go on to add, as of particular moment, that he remained a Jew all his life. One can only agree, provided we understand the designation, as Paul understood his Jewishness, to refer to his Jewish ancestry: he was – and, to be sure, remained all his life – a Jew “by birth” (φύσει [Gal 2:15]); his kindred “according to the flesh” (κατὰ σάρκα) were similarly born (Rom 9:3; cf. 4:1). Since he was – and, to be sure, remained all his life – “of the seed of Abraham, the tribe of Benjamin,” he was, all his life, an “Israelite” (Rom 11:1; cf. 2 Cor 11:22; Phil 3:5). This was not subject to change – and it was important to the apostle. In addition to shaping his conscious and unconscious thinking in countless ways,23 Paul saw his identity as a Jew as proof that God had not forsaken his people; that a remnant of those born Jews, even in his day, were God’s chosen “by grace”; and that God could therefore be trusted to bring salvation to “all Israel” – the born descendants of the patriarchs, to whom irrevocable promises had been made.24 20 

See chapter 7 below. does not, however, follow the Sermon on the Mount in speaking of the inadequacies of particular provisions in the law, highlighting rather the inability of the law as a whole to compel rebellious “flesh” to submit to its demands (Rom 7:14; 8:3). Conversely, Paul (but not the Sermon on the Mount) explicitly limits the period of the law’s hegemony: though the essential players in human history are Adam and Christ (founding figures of the old and the new humanity, respectively), the law was “added” to the old age scene at the time of Moses in order to clearly define, and even exacerbate, the rebelliousness of old age humanity (Gal 3:19, 22; Rom 5:13, 20; 7:5, 7–11, 13); it remained in force until the coming of Christ, the promised “seed” of Abraham (Gal 3:19; cf. 3:23–25; 2 Cor 3:11). 22  To judge, e. g., by the Thessalonian correspondence, the law of Moses played no part in Paul’s message in Thessalonica. 23  See chapter 21 below. 24  See the argument of Romans 11, and chapter 14 below. 21  Paul



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Nonetheless, that Paul’s Jewish ancestry was no longer what was most central to his identity is apparent from the terms “by birth” and “according to the flesh” by which he explicitly delimited his Jewishness.25 Crucially, Paul could distinguish “being a Jew” from “living as a Jew,” as he did when addressing Peter in Antioch: “if you, being a Jew, live ‘Gentile-ly’ and not ‘Jewish-ly’ (εἰ σὺ Ἰουδαῖος ὑπάρχων ἐθνικῶς καὶ οὐχὶ Ἰουδαϊκῶς ζῇς)” (Gal 2:14). In the context, it is clear that Peter’s (temporary) living as a Gentile and not as a Jew represented Paul’s normal, and programmatically adopted, practice, that of eating with Gentile believers.26 Since Paul went on to criticize Jewish believers who stopped eating with Gentiles for not acting in accordance with “the truth of the gospel,” he evidently thought faithfulness to the gospel required them, too, to live “as Gentiles, and not as Jews” (2:13–14). That Paul himself no longer consistently lived in a recognizably Jewish way is presumably what he meant by speaking of his “former life in Judaism” (1:13–14). Paul wrote Galatians to implore Gentiles not to take up the distinctively Jewish practices required by the law; one way he made the point was by telling them to become like him as he had become like them (i. e., like a Gentile [Gal 4:12]). He claimed, furthermore, that he would show himself a “transgressor [of the law]” if he were to reestablish (“build up again”) what he had already “demolished” when he – as he put it, in the most un-Jewish statement he ever made – “died to the law in order that he might live to God” (Gal 2:18–19). In other words: he could not be guilty of transgressing laws to which he was no longer subject.27 Another way of saying that Paul “lived as a Gentile, and not as a Jew” (Gal 2:14), or that, when with Galatian Gentiles, he “became like” them (4:12), was to say that when he was with those “without the law,” he lived 25  Everyone born a Jew is, ipso facto, a Jew “according to the flesh”; that Paul so delimits his own Jewishness can only mean that something else is even more fundamental to his identity. Cf. the claim that God’s Son was born of the seed of David “according to the flesh” in Rom 1:3 – to which Paul immediately adds that “according to the spirit of holiness,” he was “ordained Son of God in power by [or “since”] his resurrection from the dead” (1:4). That Christ, “according to the flesh,” belonged to the Jewish people is not what Paul deems most important in Rom 9:5 either; he immediately adds, on the most natural reading of the text, that Christ is “God over all, blessed forever.” Paul is no longer content with knowing Christ (or anyone else) “according to the flesh” (2 Cor 5:16). 26  Attempts to show that Paul did nothing that others, who were considered lawobservant Jews, were prepared to do are not without interest; for understanding Paul, however, it is of greater significance to see that he saw himself, at least at times, as living “as a Gentile and not as a Jew.” 27  His position is thus scarcely captured by saying that, when with Gentiles, he occasionally “took liberties” with the law. Those obligated to observe a law are not, in any case, at liberty to decide when and where they will obey it. But Paul’s point is precisely that he was under no obligation to observe a “demolished,” “died to” law.

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“as without the law”: “with Jews I became as a Jew, in order that I might win the Jews; with those under the law, as one under the law – though not being myself under law – in order that I might win those under the law; with those without the law, as without the law – not being without the law of God, but subject to the law of Christ – in order that I might win those without the law” (1 Cor 9:20–21). The law to which he was not subject, but with which he – pursuing a mission based on a different vision – chose to comply when with those who were, was clearly that of Moses; the “law of God” to which he was subject – in his mission, and according to his new vision – was that which bound him to the service of Christ. Paul was, after all, a “strong” believer who felt free to eat any food and treat all days alike (Rom 14:1–15:6).28 It does not follow that he looked for pork chops on the menu wherever he ate. Martin Luther denounced those 28  Cf. Barclay, “Do We Undermine the Law?” In all likelihood, the assemblies in Rome in which Paul’s letter would be read were largely Gentile, though including a noticeable contingent of Jews as well. (Could a letter addressed to “all” those in Rome who are “beloved of God and called to be saints” [Rom 1:7] be intended to have no Jewish readers?) Paul’s concern that Jewish believers (patently, in Rome) not be disdained is evident in the specific warning given Gentiles in 11:13–24, as well as in 14:3, 10. His refusal to identify the “weak” in Romans 14 with Jewish believers was perhaps due in part to the sensitivity of the issue: direct identification might contribute to the very contempt for Jews that he wanted to avoid; but it is also likely true that some Gentile believers were numbered with the “weak.” But even if Paul envisaged his readership as entirely Gentile, and even if the issue lying behind Paul’s discussion was not Jewish food laws, the fact remains that Paul, Jew though he was, identified himself with those (“strong” in faith) who saw believers as free to eat any meat and who regarded no day as more sacred than another (cf. 14:2, 5; 15:1). And he cannot have imagined himself the only Jew entitled to do so, since he justified his freedom, not by speaking of what was peculiarly permitted an apostle to the Gentiles, but by citing a fundamental principle that he knew “in Christ Jesus” (14:14). It is true that law-observant Jews could say, as Paul does in Romans 14, that no food, “of itself,” is unclean (Rom 14:14). So Rudolph, “Paul and the Food Laws,” 159–162, citing a well-known saying of Yochanan ben Zakkai. Yochanan’s point, however, was that the reason why we must not eat certain foods is not that such foods are inherently unclean, but that the Almighty commanded us not to eat them. Paul’s point, to the contrary, is that those aware that no food is inherently unclean are free to eat “anything” (cf. 14:2). The rule of 1 Cor 7:17, 20, and 24 – that believers should remain in the state in which they were “called” – is sometimes interpreted as indicating that Jewish believers, but not Gentile, ought to keep all aspects of Mosaic law. But what Paul had in mind is shown by the illustrations he gives: since neither circumcision nor uncircumcision really matters, Jews should not attempt to reverse their circumcision, nor should Gentiles be circumcised; and slaves need not strive to procure their freedom. That, however, in the case of slavery, Paul’s “rule” is no more than a “rule of thumb” is evident from his implicit request for Onesimus’s freedom in his letter to Philemon; 1 Cor 7:21b may allow for other exceptions as well. Moreover, in the context in 1 Corinthians 7, the point of spelling out this policy is to say that both those married and those unmarried can best serve God by remaining in the marital status in which they found themselves when “called” – though here, too, Paul makes it clear that the unmarried are not obliged to follow this “rule” (v. 28). Whether or not Jewish believers retain an obligation to observe all parts of



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who flaunted their freedom from traditional practices by ostentatiously doing the opposite.29 Paul felt no need to do so; quite the contrary. There were times when Christ was best served, and love expressed, by living as a Jew (1 Cor 9:20). He was, moreover, quite prepared to recognize that there were Jewish Christians30 who served God best by observing the practices in which they had been brought up and which they now found themselves unable, in good conscience, to abandon (Rom 14:1–9).31 His own conscience was more robust; in their company, however, he would eat only what they ate rather than offend them (Rom 14:13–22; cf. 1 Cor 8:13). He was, he assures us, always prepared to limit his exercise of freedom “for the sake of the gospel” (cf. 1 Cor 8:9–13; 9:12, 19–23). But the freedom itself was fundamental to the gospel as he understood it: “the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus” had to be maintained if “the truth of the gospel” was to be preserved (Gal 2:4–5). As noted above, Paul condemned Jewish believers who, rather than be seen as unfaithful Jews, withdrew from table fellowship with Gentiles: they were acting contrary the Mosaic law is not the issue; and the suggestion that they are so obligated is contrary to much that Paul writes elsewhere. 29  See my Perspectives, 37–38. 30  I am, of course, aware that Paul does not use the term “Christian” for his converts and that, to the extent that the term suggests adherents of a “religion” in the modern sense of the word, it is misleading in an ancient context. I agree, furthermore, that Paul did not see his task in life as the trivial one of founding a new “religion”; ask him, and he will tell you that his few, tiny, scattered groups of converts marked the beginnings of the new creation. Still, a term is needed for what were already in Paul’s day distinct communities from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. And if use of the term “Christian” to designate them risks obscuring ways in which they differed from modern-day believers, the avoidance of the term risks obscuring the fundamental ways in which they are united, e. g., in their belief in Jesus as the Christ, who died and rose again for their salvation; and in their initiation into the community of believers through baptism in Jesus’ name and their regular observance of “the Lord’s supper.” In short, something is lost, and something gained, either way. To the diffident defense of my usage offered in chapter 20 n. 4, I am pleased to append the following words of E. P. Sanders (“Paul’s Jewishness,” 278–279): “Paul had terms for his own group – not the word Christian or Christianity, but nevertheless a distinct terminology. Scholars frequently ignore or undervalue this evidence. … He often designates his group by a phrase that includes the word Christ, such as those who are ‘called of Jesus Christ’ (Rom 1:6), those who are ‘baptized in Christ Jesus’ (Rom 6:3), those in whom Christ is (Rom 8:10), ‘joint heirs with Christ’ (Rom 8:17), ‘one body in Christ’ (Rom 12:5), ‘the body of Christ’ (1 Cor 12:27), those who are ‘sanctified in Christ’ (1 Cor 1:2), ‘members of Christ’ (1 Cor 6:15), those who are ‘Christ’s’ (2 Cor 10:7; Gal 3:29), those who are ‘in Christ’ (Gal 3:27, 28), and ‘the saints in Christ Jesus’ (Phil 1:1). … It is easy to call these people Christians, and I see no reason to avoid the use of the term when discussing Paul’s converts: they are Christians, people ‘in Christ,’ not Jews or Israelites.” 31  In the light of 1 Cor 9:20–23, it is clear that Paul would also support believers who were Jews by birth and who continued to “live as Jews” “for the sake of the gospel”, i. e., to further their mission to other Jews.

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to – the same phrase again – “the truth of the gospel” (2:11–14). Paul’s argument in Galatians shows why. In all ages, God can declare sinners to be (not sinners, but) “righteous” only by reckoning their faith as righteousness (Gal 3:6–7; cf. 2:17; Rom 4:5); this extraordinary method of counting righteous the unrighteous had to be adopted because the ordinary standard of righteousness (i. e., the righteous are those who do what is right) was met by none: If a law had been given that was able to give life [to the dead], then indeed righteousness would have been by the law. But Scripture confined all under the power of sin. … The law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be declared righteous by faith. (Gal 3:21–24)

In Paul’s understanding, the law spells out the “good” that human beings ought to do (cf. Rom 2:7–10, 13). But it is more than a code to guide people’s behavior: it “rules” – until death – those to whom it is given (Rom 7:1); under its administration, life in divine favor is granted those who obey it, while it calls down God’s “wrath” on transgressors (Rom 4:15; Gal 3:10). The fundamental principle of the law’s administration is this: “The one who does these things [i. e., the requirements of the law] will live by them” (Rom 10:5; cf. Gal 3:12). This is the “righteousness of the law” (Rom 10:5), and Paul nowhere questions its axiomatic truth – indeed, the gospel of justification by faith presupposes it. Interpreters pre- and post-Sanders alike have, I believe, wrongly looked for what Paul saw as Judaism’s misunderstanding or perversion of the law. The fundamental problem, as Paul saw it, was not Judaism’s (purported) legalistic or its (purported) ethnocentric distortion of the law. Laws, as laws, require compliance with their demands; God’s law was no different. Jews were not wrong to think that righteousness lay in doing what God told them to do (cf. Deut 6:25); nor were they wrong in including God’s boundary-marking demands among those they were bound to obey. The problem with the law, as Paul sees it, is not that it has been distorted into something it is not, but that it spells out a path to righteousness that sinners are both unable and disinclined to take; and the law itself is too “weak” to enable them to do so (Rom 8:3). Under the law’s administration, and judged by the principle of the law, no human being is righteous. We have previously charged [i. e., in the argument of 1:18–2:29, to which Paul here returns after the parenthesis of 3:1–8] both Jews and Gentiles as all under the power of sin. As it is written, “There is none righteous.” (Rom 3:9–10)32 32  Paul’s summary in 3:9 of his preceding argument shows that what he believes he has demonstrated is the sinfulness of Jews and Gentiles alike. This is further confirmed by the conclusion to 1:18–3:20 in 3:19–20: the whole world is culpable before God, including specifically Jews (to whom the law was given, and to whom the preceding quotations from the law must therefore particularly apply). The thrust of much of chapter 2 has been



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What the law says it speaks to those who are under the law [i. e., the judgment that “there is none righteous” applies in the first place to Jews], in order that every mouth may be stopped [i. e., if those given the law are guilty as charged, then so much the more is the rest of humankind], and all the world might become culpable before God. Therefore, by the works of the law no flesh will be found righteous in God’s eyes; for by the law comes the recognition of sin. (3:19–20) There is no difference [between Jew and Gentile]. All have sinned. (3:22–23) The mindset of the flesh is one of enmity toward God; it does not submit to God’s law, and, indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (8:7–8)

It follows that if human beings, sinners all, are to be found righteous before God, it must be “apart from law” (3:21) – a law that serves its purpose in highlighting a dilemma it is itself powerless to resolve (3:20; 7:7; 8:3). Furthermore, if God is to be rightly served, it must be by those who have “died to the law” and who now, no longer “under the law” but “freed” from it, serve God “in a new way, by the Spirit” (Rom 6:14; 7:6). In the earliest articles reproduced below, it seemed necessary to defend this understanding against those who would limit Paul’s declarations of freedom from the law to a partial freedom: freedom from certain demands of the law but not others; or freedom from the law’s condemnation but not from (at least certain of) its demands; or even freedom from a particular (legalistic) perversion of the law. Legitimate concerns lie behind such interpretations; to these I will turn below. But it seems clear to me, as I argued in those articles, that worthy intentions have led to misconstruals of Paul’s argument.33 It was the law given to Moses on Mount Sinai – not some of its commands, or only its condemnation, still less a misunderstanding of it – that was to be valid only until Christ came (Gal 3:19); that served as “our” to show that factors that might be thought to render innocuous Gentile or Jewish sin do not in fact do so. Gentiles can be held responsible for their sin though they were not given the law, since what the law requires is written on their heart (2:14–15). The privileges God has granted Jews (including the giving of the law) are only of benefit if they in fact keep the law; otherwise they are no better than Gentiles (2:17–29). The affirmation in Rom 3:1–2 – that the privileges of Jews to whom “the oracles of God” were given are real enough in spite of what has just been said – shows that what has just been said pertained to Jews and might appear to call in question any benefit in being Jewish. That Paul is concerned to show that, in the end, Jews and Gentiles are held to the same divine standard, found guilty alike, and justified alike by faith in Jesus Christ is clear in 2:9–11; 3:22–23, 28–30. 33  If, e. g., Paul saw himself as still bound to observe the law’s commands but not subject to its sanctions, then he could still be a transgressor even though he would not be condemned for his transgressions; but Paul claims that he would show himself a transgressor only if he reestablished what he had demolished (Gal 2:18). Similarly, the wife who marries another after her husband has died is not free simply from the law’s condemnation of those who commit adultery; the law prohibiting adultery simply does not apply to her. And her position, says Paul, is also that of believers who have “died to the law” (Rom 7:2–4). See further chapters 15, 16, and 17 below.

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guardian until faith came and “we” could be justified by faith; now “we” are no longer under the guardian (3:23–25). Those “led by the Spirit” are “not under the law” (5:18). A more recent trend among Pauline scholars limits Paul’s declarations of freedom from the law to Gentile believers; in fact, we are told, Paul was simply affirming the common Jewish understanding that the law of Moses was meant for Jews, not Gentiles; that Gentiles need not (perhaps they could not) observe it; that they could be righteous as Gentiles, without becoming Jews and adopting Jewish practices. All of this would make sense, of course, for a first-century Jew to say. And it would be so easy to say that one can only wonder why Paul did not say it. Had he taken that straightforward tack in writing to the Galatians, who would have been offended? The argument of Galatians, however, is not that Gentiles need not get circumcised and adopt Jewish practices since the (still valid) Mosaic law and covenant were meant only for Jews; rather, Paul attempts to dissuade Gentiles from submitting to a law that curses its subjects (3:10, 13), or from entering a covenant (that of Mount Sinai) that “bears children for slavery” (a state in which, Paul declares, present-day Jerusalem finds itself [4:24–25]). The freedom from obligation to the law that Paul speaks of is not that of Gentiles for whom the law was not intended, but that of those “redeemed” from the law (4:4–5), who have “died” to the law (2:19), who – now that “faith” has come – are no longer under the law’s guardianship (3:23–25). In short, rather than affirming the standard position that Gentiles are not meant to keep the law, Paul develops a whole theology of the law that is anything but standard Jewish fare: a theology that is incompatible with the notion that believers, Jewish or Gentile, are bound to keep the law. We may sum up much of what has been said by asking the question of the day: Did Paul “remain within Judaism”? If we leave to the side – as sometimes happens in these discussions – what Paul himself has to say on the question (Gal 1:13–14),34 the answer will depend on what we mean by “remaining within Judaism.”35 An ambiguous question36 can only receive a qualified answer. 1. If, regardless of specifics of belief or practice, the faith of any pious, first-century Jew represents one of the Judaisms (plural) of the day, and the existence of many Judaisms is then seen as demonstrating the diversity of

34 

Cf. Dunn, “Review,” 784. See further chapter 20 below. 36  Not only is the term “Judaism” ambiguous; when we ask whether Paul remained within Judaism, after whose view of Paul and Judaism are we inquiring: his own, that of his contemporary, non-Christ-believing Jews, or that of modern scholars? 35 



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Judaism, then Paul remained within Judaism. He was a Jew. He lived in the first century. He was pious. 2. All his life, Paul believed in the God of Israel. He accepted the Hebrew scriptures as sacred. He regarded the commandments given to Moses as holy, just, and good. He believed that Jesus was the Messiah of Jewish expectation; Jews who failed to see this were, in his view, blind to the truth of their own scriptures (cf. 2 Cor 3:14). He insisted that his Gentile converts worship exclusively Israel’s God. The moral standards he required of his Gentile converts correspond to the second tablet of the Decalogue.37 If these indisputable facts are sufficient to establish that Paul remained within Judaism, then Paul lived and died within Judaism. So do the Plymouth Brethren. 3. As one who shared with other Jews the same faith in the sacred history of his people, Paul continued to attend synagogues wherever he went. In that context, one cannot imagine the apostle of the epistles doing anything other than what he is portrayed as doing in the Acts of the Apostles: using every opportunity to convince his fellow Jews of what he had come to see as the true interpretation of Scripture, the true understanding of their common sacred history and, particularly, of it most recent developments. He clearly believed he had a better understanding than non-Christ-believing Jews of what it meant to be the “seed” of Abraham. Few Jews agreed. 4. More specifically: Paul believed that Israel’s God was the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 1:3). He saw references to Jesus Christ in scriptures that spoke of Israel’s God (e. g., Rom 10:13; Phil 2:10). He spoke of the (Old Testament) “day of the Lord” as the “day of (Jesus) Christ” (Phil 1:6; cf. 1 Thess 4:15–5:2). He invoked divine blessing jointly “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:3, etc.). Now, while it is true that no individual, institution, or party could speak authoritatively for “Judaism” in the first century, it is clear that for many Jews – then, as later – Paul’s faith in these regards was something other than the faith of their fathers. Those zealous for the latter might even deem it sufficiently pernicious to merit rooting out (cf. Ga1 1:13–14, 20; Phil 3:6). 5. Paul believed that Jews no less than non-Jews needed faith in Jesus Christ if they were to be saved (cf. Rom 10:1; 11:14, 23; 1 Cor 9:20, 22). Implicit in this conviction is the judgment that the Mosaic covenant and law are inadequate for the purpose; but Paul did not leave that judgment implicit. Though the law was divinely given, it served a limited (divine) purpose 37  The second tablet of the Decalogue is cited in Rom 13:8–10 to illustrate how the love that Paul enjoins in effect fulfills the law; but it is the love, not the keeping of the law, that he enjoins. See chapter 15 below.

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(that of defining and highlighting human sinfulness) for a limited period of time (until Abraham’s promised “seed,” Christ, should come [Gal 3:16–19]). Righteousness cannot come from the law (Gal 2:21; 3:21–22); righteousness and salvation depend – for Jews and Gentiles alike – on confessing with one’s mouth the faith of one’s heart in the Christian gospel (Rom 10:9–13). E. P. Sanders, for one, thinks that Paul thus denied “the foundations of Judaism.”38 6. Paul’s practice matched his theology. As one free from the law, he at times lived “as a Gentile” (cf. Gal 2:13–14; 4:12; 1 Cor 9:21). So “strong” were his theological convictions that he could, with good conscience, eat any food and treat “holy” days as no different from any other (Rom 14:1–15:6). If “remaining within Judaism” means continuing to observe the distinctively Jewish requirements of the law, then Paul did not remain within Judaism.39 What, then, are the “legitimate concerns” referred to above that have been raised against such a reading of Paul? 1. It is thought to pit God’s law against God’s gospel.40 Not every interpretation of Paul that appears to pit the law against the gospel can be right (Marcion’s, for one, was not); still, an interpretation that gives no such appearance cannot be correct. Paul does, after all, contrast “the righteousness of the law” with that “of faith”;41 he contrasts the law and God’s promise, as realized in the gospel (Rom 4:13–15; Gal 3:15–18): already in his own day, Paul’s talk about the law provoked the question whether it was opposed to God’s promise (Gal 3:21). Paul responds, of course, with an emphatic denial. But in clarifying his position (3:21–25), he does not say that, in speaking of the law as he has just done (i. e., contrasting it with God’s promise and saying that its hegemony is now past [3:17–19]), he was referring only to a part of 38 Cf. Sanders, “Did Paul Break with Judaism?” 235: Paul “argued that Jews and gentiles were equally outside the people of God unless they had faith in Christ, and that if they had faith in Christ the law was optional for them all – optional for Jews as well as for gentiles. Paul even thought that, in select circumstances, Jews should disregard aspects of the law.” Paul was thus “striking” at “the two pillars of Judaism: the election and the law,” thereby denying “the foundations of Judaism.” (For Sanders’s understanding of Judaism as based on election and the law, see chapter 11 below.) 39  That Paul’s conduct was repeatedly seen as unacceptable by contemporary Jewish standards is apparent from the “thirty-nine stripes” that he repeatedly received in synagogues (2 Cor 11:24). Cf. the important article by Barclay, “Paul among Diaspora Jews,” and his pointed observation (“Deviance and Apostasy,” 136): “Inasmuch as he was viewed by his contemporary Jews as an apostate, he was (historically speaking) an apostate, and no amount of pleading about the Jewish elements in his theology or the diversity within first-century Judaism can mask or alter that reality.” 40  Those who raise this charge generally interpret Paul more or less as Calvin did; see chapter 22 below. 41  See chapter 13 below.



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the law, or to the law when seen apart from its true essence, or to some other misconstruction of what the law was all about. His point, as he explains it, is rather that the limited purpose of the law could hardly infringe upon the very different purpose of the gospel: the one consigns all humanity to the power of sin, the other brings sinners justification. In short, as noted above, the law is neither to be identified with the gospel nor seen in opposition to it. Rather, the law is the gospel’s essential presupposition: without the dilemma to which the law gives definition,42 there would be no need for the solution on offer in the gospel. 2. It is thought that those pronounced free from the law will think themselves free to do as they please. Not every interpretation of Paul that appears to encourage immoral behavior can be right; still, an interpretation that gives no such appearance cannot be correct, for Paul’s own teaching clearly led the Corinthians to draw that conclusion (1 Cor 6:12–20; perhaps even 5:1), he was aware that others so construed his teaching (Rom 3:8), and he repeatedly labored to banish such thoughts from his readers (Gal 5:13–26; Phil 3:17–21; Rom 6:1–23; 8:13). Still, none of Paul’s labors took the form of saying (what many today want him to say) that his talk of freedom from the law referred only to its ceremonial aspects, or to its sanctions, or to its misinterpretation.43 Rather, he argued consistently from what we may call Christian principles:44 you are still to serve God, but now in a new way, by the Spirit (Rom 7:6); those who have died with Christ to sin cannot continue living in it (Rom 6:1–11); walk in the Spirit, and do not fulfill the desires of the flesh (Gal 5:16); clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and forget about gratifying fleshly desires (Rom 13:14); if you live by the flesh, you will die (Rom 8:13). In addition to such general admonitions, Paul gave instructions to his readers of what constituted appropriate behavior in a number of concrete situations – though his ethical teaching, like that of Jesus, bore little resemblance to the Pharisaic halakhah with which he must have been familiar. And it did not invoke Mosaic law as its basis. A semi-qualification to the preceding is, however, in order: though Paul never suggested that believers remain subject to a part of the law, he clearly 42  That the law is not itself the source of the problem is clear in Rom 5:12–14 and insisted upon in 7:7–25. But it gives definition to the problem (i. e., in the presence of the law, sin becomes obvious transgression [5:13]), even exacerbates it (5:20; 7:5), while being itself too “weak” to overcome it (8:3). 43  In effect, such interpreters want Paul to say that the law (or the “moral law,” at least) continues to serve as a binding code for believers to live by. But for Paul, the law is never simply a code for behavior; it is a path to life that has proved not to be viable. It does not follow that those freed from the law may live as they please; but the demands under which they must live require a different basis. 44  See chapters 5 and 17 below. On Gal 5:14; Rom 8:4; 13:8–10, see chapter 15 below.

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expected their behavior to conform to its moral demands (cf. Rom 13:8– 10) – not because Moses commanded them, but because those demands spell out what is “good” for all human beings, and hence a goodness that God requires even of those “without the law” (Rom 2:6–13).45 Moral expectations cannot be stated more basically than that human beings are to do what is “good”; and Paul expects this of believers (Rom 12:2, 9; 16:19). 3. It is thought to detach the law from the covenant. Portrayed as above, Paul might seem to have understood the law simply as laying out commandments by which human beings are to live and a standard by which they will be judged. On that understanding, a Jew might well wonder why Paul ignores the covenant of which the law was a part: a covenant Israel entered as God’s people, and a covenant that provided means of atonement for their sins.46 And a Christian, seeing believers as true heirs of Israel’s faith, and seeing the law’s rites of atonement and other ceremonial aspects as fulfilled in Christ, might well choose to highlight the continuity between the Old Testament law (and covenant) and New Testament realities. They might, indeed, prefer to speak of one covenant, not two, embracing both Old Testament and New.47 Neither Jews nor the heirs of Calvin see any reason to distinguish between promises God made to Abraham and the law God gave to Moses; together, they make one covenant. But Paul draws sharp distinctions – and he emphatically speaks of two covenants (Gal 4:21–5:6). He sees the Abrahamic promises (a covenant, according to Gal 3:17) as finding fulfillment in Christ, with their promised blessings enjoyed by Jews and Gentiles alike who believe in him. He sees the law (the essence of the “covenant” from Mount Sinai [Gal 4:24]) as something different entirely – so different that he must insist that the law cannot invalidate God’s earlier covenant of promise (Gal 3:17). The essential difference Paul sees between them is that a blessing promised by God will surely be fulfilled, whereas a blessing contingent upon human observance of the law is bound to go unrealized. For Paul, promise and law represent two potential, but mutually exclusive, paths to blessing (Gal 3:18; 5:2–4; Rom 4:13–16); only the promise, however, is efficacious. It does not follow that Paul ignores the covenantal context of the law. He simply follows Scripture in believing that the Mosaic law (and covenant) attached blessing to observance of its commands (Deut 11:26–28; 28:1–14; 30:16–20). As for its rites of atonement, Scripture itself indicates that they were not meant to cover willful sin (Num 15:30–31) – and Paul sees all 45 

See chapter 19 below. So Schoeps, Paul. Cf. my Perspectives, 123–128. 47  So, again, Calvin and his heirs; see chapter 22 below.

46 



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human beings as innately, and willfully, resistant to God’s law.48 It is likely enough that, for Paul, Sinai’s rites of atonement merely foreshadowed Christ’s efficacious self-sacrifice, though he is less explicit on the subject than the letter to the Hebrews (cf., however, Rom 3:25; 1 Cor 5:7; Col 2:17). But even if the law can be read as pointing to Christ, Paul still sees its essence as different from, though an essential presupposition of, the gospel of Christ Jesus (cf. Gal 3:11–13). Chapters 2 through 22 below were written over a period of 35 years to meet a variety of demands.49 All but one (chapter 10) have previously been published, though (like chapter 10), chapters 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 14, 18, and 19 perhaps still betray their origin in oral presentations; and chapters 2 and 6 ought to look like entries in a Bible dictionary. In addition to standardizing formatting and referencing, I have rewritten sentences here and there, largely for stylistic reasons, though occasionally (especially in earlier articles) to bring claims in line with my present thinking. These are few, however, and I have made no attempt to update bibliographies. Nor have I attempted to remove material in one chapter that overlaps with discussions in others: each chapter was first written to stand on its own, and is meant to do so still. That the majority of articles pertain to Paul reflects the focus of most of my post-dissertation research; but chapter 22 (though still concerned with Pauline interpretation) is an offshoot of the project that led to the publication of Reading Sacred Scripture, a look at key figures in the history of Christian biblical interpretation (to which my son Martin also contributed). Knowing that I do not know what a day may bring forth, I tentatively plan to devote future research largely to the history of Pauline interpretation. But to readers of the following chapters, it will already be apparent that I have long found Luther, in particular, a superior interpreter of Paul.50 Of 48  See chapter 4 below. Mark Adam Elliott (Survivors) has shown that a number of Jews of Paul’s day thought Israel’s covenant had been broken, and that a large part of Israel was now effectively excluded from its blessings. Paul thought that, apart from Jesus Christ, that was true of all. 49  I thank Markus Bockmuehl for proposing their republication here, and Dr. Henning Ziebritzki for direction and encouragement in preparing the present volume. Chapter 5 was originally prepared at the request of members of the Paraenesis Project (of which I was not a part) to apply their working definition of “paraenesis” to 4 Maccabees. Since I had given a good deal of attention to Finnish contributions to the debate surrounding the “New Perspective on Paul,” I was asked to introduce a volume of Finnish studies on Pauline theology (chapter 12). Chapter 19 was prepared in response to a request to address the issue of biblical foundations at a symposium devoted to the theme of natural law. Chapters 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, and 18 were also prepared in response to invitations to address particular topics. 50  See chapter 22 in this volume, but also the concluding remarks to chapter 11 for some necessary qualifications to any endorsement of Luther as a reader of Paul. To be emphasized again is that I do not believe Paul faulted Judaism for its “legalism” – though

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course, we must always be alert to ways in which Luther’s sixteenth-century circumstances and concerns may have distorted his reading of a firstcentury apostle; our own circumstances and concerns (whether theological or other) inevitably do the same. But as we see blind spots in Augustine’s or Luther’s interpretations, so reading their interpretations can alert us to blind spots in our own: to concerns they shared with the apostle that we overlook through ignorance or indifference. After all, their worldview was closer to Paul’s than any modern student’s ever can be. Furthermore, no modern student of Paul can match the intensity with which Augustine and Luther wrestled with his writings. If we are distrustful of the theological biases that they brought to the exercise, we need to remember that the most important of those biases in this context was the conviction that Paul wrote with divine authority and must be heeded: a conviction, in other words, that made careful interpretation a divine mandate. Of course, contemporary concerns affected what they found in Paul. But influence in the other direction was at least as strong: what they found in Paul brought into question beliefs and practices with which they were familiar and called for their reformation. Study of Paul profoundly reshaped their thinking. Both Augustine and Luther are manifestly Pauline theologians. I persist in believing that modern students of Paul will find reading Augustine, Luther, and other interpreters from the last two thousand years a stimulating and enlightening exercise. The provincial mindset that thinks we can ignore – because “prejudiced” – “traditional” Pauline interpretation may give us an apostle better in tune with twenty-first century sensitivities and concerns, if that is our goal. It is doubtful that it yields a better understanding of Paul. Bibliography Allison, Dale C., Jr. The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. Barclay, John M. G. “Deviance and Apostasy: Some Applications of Deviance Theory to First-Century Judaism and Christianity.” In Barclay, Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011, 123–139. – “‘Do We Undermine the Law?’ A Study of Romans 14.1–15.6” In Barclay, Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011, 37–59. – “Paul among Diaspora Jews: Anomaly or Apostate?” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 60 (1995): 89–120.

such a critique is usually associated with “traditional” or “Lutheran” understandings of the apostle.



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Daube, David. “Concessions to Sinfulness in Jewish Law.” Journal of Jewish Studies 10 (1959): 1–13. Davies, W. D., and Dale C. Allison, Jr. A Critical And Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vols. 1–3. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988–1997. Dodd, C. H. Gospel and Law. New York: Columbia University Press, 1951. Dunn, James D. G. “Review” of Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle, edited by Mark D. Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm. Journal of Theological Studies 66 (2015): 782–784. Elliott, Mark Adam. The Survivors of Israel: A Reconsideration of the Theology of Pre-Christian Judaism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. Gerhardsson, Birger. The Reliability of the Gospel Tradition. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2001. Knox, John. The Ethic of Jesus in the Teaching of the Church. New York: Abingdon, 1961. Rudolph, David. “Paul and the Food Laws: A Reassessment of Romans 14:14, 20.” In Paul the Jew: Rereading the Apostle as a Figure of Second Temple Judaism, edited by Gabriele Boccaccini and Carlos A. Segovia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016, 151–181. Sanders, E. P. “Did Paul Break with Judaism?” In Sanders, Comparing Judaism and Christianity: Common Judaism, Paul, and the Inner and Outer in Ancient Religion. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016, 231–240. – “Paul’s Jewishness.” In Sanders, Comparing Judaism and Christianity: Common Judaism, Paul, and the Inner and Outer in Ancient Religion. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016, 267–285. Schoeps, Hans Joachim. Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961. Westerholm, Stephen. Jesus and Scribal Authority. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1978. – Justification Reconsidered: Rethinking a Pauline Theme. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013. – “The Law in the Sermon on the Mount: Matt 5:17–48.” Criswell Theological Review 6 (1992): 43–56. – Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. –, and Martin Westerholm. Reading Sacred Scripture: Voices from the History of Biblical Interpretation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016. – Understanding Matthew: The Early Christian Worldview of the First Gospel. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006.

Chapter 2

Law in Early Judaism “Law” (or, adopting the Hebrew term, Torah) is used in early Judaism primarily for the sum of commandments given to Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai, or for the Pentateuch in which they are contained.1 In the latter case, the “law” was commonly distinguished from the “prophets” (e. g., 2 Macc 15:9) and other writings (the Prologue to Sirach, e. g., speaks of “the other books of our ancestors”) as a defined part of the Jewish sacred scriptures. In rabbinic Judaism, the term was extended to include the “oral” as well as the “written Torah.” In what follows, we will consider Torah as the law code of the Jewish people; the relationship of Torah with wisdom, or the law of nature; its place in God’s covenant with Israel; Torah as the focus of disputes between the various “parties” of Second Temple Judaism; and the study of Torah as worship.

Torah as the Law Code of the Jewish People 1. Recognition of the Jewish Law Code. In the late seventh century BCE , shortly before the Babylonian exile, Josiah attempted to implement the laws of the Deuteronomic code throughout his territories (2 Kgs 23:1–25). In the postexilic period, Persian kings (following a pattern they employed in relation to other subject peoples as well) recognized and sponsored a native law code – in this case, Mosaic law as found in the precursor of our Pentateuch – as binding on Jews living within the Persian province Beyond the River (i. e., west of the Euphrates; Ezra 7:25–26). The books of Ezra and Nehemiah provide abundant evidence of efforts to implement Mosaic law (e. g., Ezra 3:2–5; 6:18; Neh 8:14–18; 10:28–39; 12:44; 13:1–3, 15–22). Sources for the subsequent period are scanty, though we may assume that later Persian and Ptolemaic rulers continued to allow Jews to govern their affairs by the Mosaic code. Still later, the Seleucid king Antiochus III (“the Great”; 223–187 BCE) granted Jews the right to be governed “according to their ancestral laws” (Josephus, Ant. 12.142); that is, according to the law of Moses as it was understood and applied among Jews in the 1 Biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version. Translations from Josephus and Philo are taken from the Loeb editions.

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early second century BCE. The situation changed dramatically under Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BCE): for a time, Jews were forbidden to live by their ancestral laws and were required to participate in the worship of non-Jewish deities; those who refused to comply were liable to punishment, even death (1 Macc 1:41–50; 2 Macc 6:1–11). The decrees proved counter-productive, however, leading rather to renewed zeal among Jews for their ancestral way of life than to its dissolution into Hellenistic culture. Many showed themselves willing to die rather than transgress their laws, and eager to fight in their defense. Shortly after the death of Antiochus IV, the right to live by their ancestral laws was restored (2 Macc 11:24–25). The Hasmoneans went further, expanding their rule into non-Jewish territory and imposing Jewish law on non-Jewish subjects (see, e. g., Josephus, Ant. 13.257–258, 397; 15.254). Roman rule put an end to all such ambitions. But though individual Roman officials at times acted in disregard of Jewish law and sensibilities, the Romans generally allowed subject peoples to practice their ancestral customs. It was to this principle that Jews appealed – frequently with success – whenever some aspect of their way of life was challenged (e. g., Josephus, Ant. 14.213–216, 235, 245–246). We read specifically of Jews being exempted from serving in the army (since such service would require Sabbath “work”; Ant. 14.223–227; cf. Life 161; Ag. Ap. 1.209), and of permission granted them to gather on the Sabbath when general assemblies were otherwise forbidden (Ant. 14.215–216). The “ancestral laws” of the Jews were to be found in the books of the Pentateuch (see, e. g., Josephus, Life 134–135). The rendering of the (Hebrew) Pentateuch into Greek was spoken of as a translation of the Jewish “laws,” an interest in which on the part of Ptolemy II Philadelphus reportedly motivated the translation (Let. Aris. 10–11; Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.45–47). To be sure, the Pentateuch contains more than “laws, statutes, and ordinances”; but the stories that preceded the legislation were regarded, in different ways, as preparation for the giving of the commands (Philo, Creation 1–3; Moses 2.45–51; Josephus, Ant. 1.18–24). As a result, the Pentateuch as a whole could be spoken of as the “constitution” or “laws” of the Jews (Josephus, Ant. 3.213; 4.194). 2. Comparison with Other Codes. Seen as their law code, Torah fulfilled the same function among Jews as other codes did among other peoples, and Moses, the “legislator” of the Jews, was compared with other putative lawgivers (like Solon the Athenian, or Lycurgus the Spartan; see Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.154, 161). Already Deuteronomy, in claiming that no other nation has “statutes and ordinances as just” as the Mosaic Torah (4:8), suggests where Torah’s competitors are to be found; and the Aramaic equivalent of



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Torah in Ezra (7:12, 14, 21, 26) is the same term used elsewhere for the “law of the Medes and Persians” (Dan 6:9, 13, 16 [Eng. trans., 6:8, 12, 15]). Unsympathetic non-Jews viewed Jewish laws as misanthropic, superstitious, and ridiculous because Jews typically were restrictive in their tablefellowship, avoided intermarriage, abstained from certain foods (Jewish refusal of pork was particularly notorious), and rested on the Sabbath. For their part, Jews responded with an apologetic literature purporting that their law successfully embodied ideals recognized but never realized by the laws of other peoples. Those who obeyed its commandments, they noted, were trained in the exercise of virtue (4 Macc 2:21–23; 5:22–24; Philo, Spec. Laws 1.314; 4.226; Virtues 18, 140–141; Josephus, Ant. 1.6; Ag. Ap. 2.145–146). Those who studied the Jewish law thereby received a grounding in the most fundamental truths about God and creation (Philo, Creation 170–172; Virtues 65; Josephus, Ant. 1.15; Ag. Ap. 2.163); if similar claims were advanced for Plato’s proposed constitution, it was pointed out that the latter, unlike the Mosaic code, was hardly translatable into earthly reality (Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.220–224). Moreover, the constitution of the Jews, it was said, was more ancient than the oldest of Greek constitutions (Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.154–156. cf. 2.226); indeed, Greek lawgivers and philosophers alike were said to have learned from Moses (Philo, Spec. Laws 4.61; Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.257, 279–281). Yet Mosaic law had never needed amendment (Philo, Moses 2.14–15; Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.183–184). It went further in encompassing every area of life (Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.156, 170–174), and commanded an obedience and loyalty among its subjects that no Greek code could match (Josephus, Ag. Ap. 1.43–44; 2.150, 227– 228, 234–235). 3. Jewish Adherence to the Code. Apologetics invites exaggeration; still, it remains true that the Jewish people were widely known for their adherence to their ancestral laws. Those living in the Diaspora inevitably felt the temptation, and sometimes considerable pressure, to discard their peculiarities and adopt the lifestyle of their neighbors. (Four Maccabees, e. g., was written to combat such temptations.) Certainly, instances can be found of the whole spectrum of possible responses to such pressure, from firm resistance to Greco-Roman culture, on the one hand, to full-scale assimilation, on the other. But the distinctive Jewish presence in cities throughout the GrecoRoman world, and the widespread Jewish reputation for exclusive worship of one God, circumcision, the observance of Sabbath and food laws, and the like, can only be explained on the assumption that most Jews made an effort to comply with at least a basic understanding of what it meant to be a Jew. Even in the Diaspora, the temple tax was collected, and the ideal of journeying to Jerusalem to attend the Jewish feasts was maintained. In the

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homeland, where shrines to other gods were not to be found, pigs were not sold on the market, and social pressure would have favored compliance with basic Jewish practices, such conformity was certainly the norm. Not even in Palestine, however, should Jewish compliance with the law be attributed solely to social pressure or force of habit. In times of crisis, Jews repeatedly proved willing to die in defense of their ancestral laws, as they had in the days of the Maccabees. Josephus tells us that when Pilate attempted to bring standards with the image of the emperor into Jerusalem, many Jews besieged his residence in Caesarea and offered their necks, exclaiming “that they were ready rather to die than to transgress the law”; Pilate gave way (J. W. 2.169–174; Ant. 18.55–59). Similarly, when Gaius Caligula attempted to have his statue erected in the Jerusalem temple, the Syrian legate entrusted with carrying out the order was met by “tens of thousands” of Jews who invited him to kill them first; before the issue was pressed, however, Caligula was assassinated in Rome and the crisis passed (Ant. 18.261–309).

Torah as Wisdom, or the Law of Nature That non-Jews could do no better than adopt a Jewish way of life seems at least implicit in claims made for the superiority of the Mosaic code (note Philo, Moses 2.17–44; Embassy 210–211; Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.282–284). That they ought to do so seems implied in the further claim that the Jewish law embodies the divine wisdom that created and now permeates the cosmos. In Jewish writings in Greek, the Mosaic code of law comes to be identified with the law of nature. 1. Torah and Wisdom. Already Deuteronomy speaks of the wisdom inherent in the Mosaic code (4:6). On the whole, however, the wisdom literature of the Old Testament (and the Book of Proverbs in particular) commends the pursuit of wisdom without identifying that path with the prescriptions of Torah: in the observations of many generations and the instruction of a wise parent may be found guidance that leads to successful living. Indeed, the blessings that wisdom literature promises the wise (e. g., Prov 3:1–10) are not unlike those promised in Deuteronomy to those who obey its laws (e. g., 28:1–14). In the Second Temple period, the two strands are explicitly brought together. Sirach 24, a song of Wisdom that begins in ways reminiscent of Proverbs 8, identifies its subject in verse 23 with “the book of the covenant of the Most High God, the law that Moses commanded us as an inheritance for the congregations of Jacob.” The passage goes on to speak of how the Mosaic law “overflows … with wisdom,” “runs over … with



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understanding,” and “pours forth instruction” (24:25–27; cf. 9:14–15; 15:1). Similarly, Baruch 4:1 identifies the “way to knowledge” (see 3:36) with “the book of the commandments of God, the law that endures for ever.” (See also 4Q525 2 II, 3–4.) Obedience to its statutes thus entails both submission to the will of the Creator and a life in harmony with the wise order that pervades all creation. The natural conclusion, that such a law ought to be obeyed by all human beings, is explicitly drawn in other texts. (Indeed, according to Jubilees, the angels themselves observe Mosaic law [2:30; 6:18; 15:27]!) At times, it is said that the law will provide the criterion by which people of all nations will be judged (L. A. B. 11:1–2; 4 Ezra 7:[72]; 2 Bar. 48:45–47; 54:14). In a rabbinic retelling of the giving of the law to Israel on Mount Sinai, the nations of the world were all offered Torah. Engrossed in their sinful ways, all but Israel rejected the offer. Still, when Scripture describes Torah using metaphors of desert, fire, and water – each of which is accessible to all human beings – it was making the point that “the words of the Torah are free to all who come into the world” (Mek. Bahodesh 5 [Lauterbach 2.234–237], on Exod 20:2; cf. Sifre Deuteronomy 343, on 33:2). 2. Torah and the Law of Nature. In the Greco-Roman world, ethical ideals were often formulated in terms of conformity with nature (cf. Rom 1:26–27; 1 Cor 11:14). Stoics in particular saw the goal of human living to be a life lived “according to nature”; that is, in harmony with both human nature and the reason or order that pervades the universe. The different laws enacted in various states may then be contrasted with the true, eternal, and universal law of nature. Adopting this line of thought, Jewish writers in Greek elevated the Mosaic law code above those of other peoples by speaking of it as the perfect embodiment of the law of nature itself. After all, they reasoned, if the law of Moses had the same divine source as the law of nature (“the Father and Maker of the world was in the truest sense also its Lawgiver” [Philo, Moses 2.48]), then nature’s order was bound to be reflected in the statutes of the law. Four Maccabees finds it self-evident that the God who created the world, in giving the law to the Jewish people, would permit them to eat what was “most suitable” for them to eat, and forbid them to eat whatever was not (5:25–26). For Philo, it is significant that Moses begins his law code with an account of the creation of the world, “implying that the world is in harmony with the Law, and the Law with the world.” It follows that anyone who observes the law becomes thereby “a loyal citizen of the world, regulating his doings by the purpose and will of Nature, in accordance with which the entire world itself also is administered” (Creation 3; see also Moses 2.51). Such a pursuit can hardly be limited to any one race of people

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(see Abraham 60–61; Moses 2.36); indeed, the patriarchs, who lived long before the Mosaic law was given, demonstrated how those who do not have that law can nonetheless observe its precepts. They were, for Philo, “living laws” themselves, the “originals” of which the later written laws were but copies (Abraham 3–6, 16, 275–276; Moses 1.162).

Torah and God’s Covenant with Israel 1. Torah and the Covenant. Texts that depict Mosaic law in universal terms (e. g., as embodying the law of nature) are likely to downplay, or omit entirely, any reference to Torah’s connection with the covenant God made with Israel. The same is true in general of texts (such as Josephus’s Against Apion, and sections in his Antiquities) intended to commend Mosaic law to a non-Jewish audience. Scholars debate whether the neglect of the covenant in these cases is merely strategic or whether it signals a genuinely different way of looking at Jewish law. Similarly the subject of dispute is the general disregard of the Mosaic law and covenant in certain apocalyptic and wisdom texts (e. g., First Enoch and Wisdom of Solomon, respectively): is the neglect simply inherent in the genre in which these texts are written, or does it indicate that Mosaic law may not have been a central concern for certain Jewish groups (e. g., a proposed “Enochic Judaism”) in the Second Temple period? Certainly, it is inconceivable that the circles in which such texts were produced did not practice circumcision, or observe Jewish food and festival laws. Even Philo and Josephus, however, acknowledge that the Mosaic law code was divinely and uniquely given to the Jewish people (Philo, Embassy 210; cf. Moses 2.12; Decalogue 15–17; Josephus, Ant. 3.223; 4.318–319). In a number of texts, it is clear that obedience to the commands of the Mosaic law represents Israel’s obligation under, and commitment to, the covenantal relationship it enjoyed with God (e. g., Sir 17:11–12; 24:23; 28:7; Jub. 23:16; cf. Exod 24:7–8). The relationship between law and covenant is indicated most clearly in the sectarian documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Believing that the majority of their compatriots had proven unfaithful to God, the sectarians required that those who joined their number must do so by “enter[ing] the covenant” that God “granted to all Israel for ever”; in the process, they must solemnly pledge “to return to the law of Moses with a whole heart and soul” (CD XV, 5–10; cf. 1QS V, 7–10). In a rabbinic expansion of the giving of the law in Exodus 20, God’s covenant relationship with Israel is illustrated with the story of a king whose sovereignty is willingly embraced by his subjects only after he has done them great good. In the same way, God first delivered Israel from Egypt and at the Red Sea, fed



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them in the wilderness, and defeated their foes; only then did God impose commandments upon Israel (Mek. Bahodesh 5 [Lauterbach 2.229–230], on Exod 20:2). The commandments so imposed included moral demands, but also matters of civil and criminal law, ritual purity, diet, Sabbath observance, annual festivals, and cultic practice. Since all were addressed in the Mosaic law, all were within the sphere of God’s concern; any isolation of a “religious” sphere of life from other spheres was therefore excluded at the outset. No commandment given by God could be considered insignificant, nor any transgression taken lightly (4 Macc 5:19–21; cf. m. Avot 2:1; 4:2). Nonetheless, the focus of the Jews’ daily confession (the Shema‘) was on the commandment to love God with “all” one’s “heart,” “soul,” and “might” (Deut 6:5). Although (as we shall see) blessings in this life and the next were promised to those who obeyed God’s commands, the pious knew that proper obedience is motivated by love for God, not by expectation of reward (Sifre Deuteronomy 41, on 11:13; m. Avot 1:3). The joy that accompanies true obedience to Torah is a frequent theme in rabbinic texts.2 2. Obedience and Its Rewards. Thematic throughout much of the literature of early Judaism is the insistence that the well-being of God’s people in this age and, where an age to come is posited, their participation in its splendors, are dependent on observance of God’s commands. In this regard, the literature simply carries forward the central motif of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History which, from Joshua through 2 Kings, interprets the history of Israel and Judah as the outworking of the blessings that Deuteronomy promises the nation when it adheres to God’s laws, and the curses it pronounces on its disobedience. Repeatedly, the literature of our period looks back on the Babylonian Exile as just punishment for transgressions committed against the Mosaic law (e. g., Jdt 5:17–18; Sir 49:4–7; Bar 1:15–3:8; Sib. Or. 3.265–281; so also, at the surface level, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch). The same explanation was given for the sufferings of the Maccabean (2 Macc 5:17, 20; 6:12–16; 7:18, 32–38) and later periods (note Pss. Sol. 2:1–21; 8:1–22, referring to the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 BCE), including, of course, those associated with the wars against Rome (so the actual setting presupposed in 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch). As in Deuteronomy (4:29–31; 30:1– 10), hope for the future lay in God’s mercy and faithfulness, the repentance of God’s people, and their renewed obedience to the law (Tob 13:1–17; Bar 2:27–35; Jub. 1:15–25; 2 Bar. 44:7; 46:5–6).

2 

Cf. the classic treatment of Schechter, Aspects, 148–169.

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A number of texts associate obedience to God’s law with divine favors experienced primarily or exclusively in this life (e. g., Tobit, Sirach, Baruch). Where life in an age to come was also envisaged, participation in its blessings was likewise deemed dependent on faithfulness to God’s commands (e. g., Pss. Sol. 3:12; 14:1–10; 4 Ezra 7:[72–73], [78–99]; 2 Bar 51:1–12). Perfect obedience might be attributed to certain worthies of the past (e. g., Pr Man 8). On the other hand, a number of texts acknowledge that no human being can be sinless in God’s eyes (e. g., Sir 19:16; 1 Esd 4:36–37; 4 Ezra 7:[46], [68]; 11Q5 XXIV, 7; 1QH XVII, 14–17; cf. 2 Bar. 84:11); and references to the mercy and forgiveness God shows for the failings of the righteous make clear that what distinguishes them from “sinners” is their positive orientation toward the Law and general pattern of obedience rather than their perfect compliance (e. g., 1QS XI, 11–15; Pss. Sol. 3:5–6; 9:6–7; 10:1–3; L. A. B. 19:9; and compare Tob 1:3 with 3:3). God’s help for human obedience is at times invoked by, and promised to, those who show themselves willing to submit to God’s commands (e. g., Jub 12:20; 22:10, 19, 23; L. A. B. 21:2; 4Q393 1–2 II, 5–6). Deuteronomy itself stressed both the accessibility and achievability of God’s demands, on the one hand (Deut 10:12–13; 11:26–28; 30:11–20), and the persistent stubbornness of God’s people, on the other (9:4–29; 31:16– 32:38). Both themes are present in the later literature as well. In verses that recall Deuteronomy’s appeal to “choose life,” Sirach 15 insists that obedience to God’s commands is possible for all who choose it: “It was [the Lord] who created humankind in the beginning, and he left them in the power of their own free choice. If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose. Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given” (Sir 15:14–17). That satisfactory compliance with God’s commands was generally thought to lie well within the capacities of God’s people is confirmed by a host of similar statements (e. g., Pss. Sol. 9:4–5; 4 Ezra 8:55–60; 9:10–12; 2 Bar. 54:14–16; Mek. Vayassa‘ 1 [Lauterbach 2.97], on Exod 15:26). It is reinforced by the many exhortations to obey God’s commands (the clear implication being that such obedience is a ready option) and the frequent recognition of at least certain people or groups of people as righteous. On the other hand, like Deuteronomy, the later literature often sees the habitual mindset of God’s people as one of rebelliousness against God’s law. The motif dominates reviews of Israel’s history and penitential prayers (e. g., Bar 1:15–3:8; Pr Azar 1:4–10; 4Q504; cf. Ezra 9:6–15; Neh 9:16–37). The judgment that at least the vast majority of the Jewish people are no better than Gentile sinners finds a natural place in the sectarian literature from our



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period (e. g., Jubilees and texts originating with the Qumran covenanters); it was also a natural conclusion to draw from the catastrophes that overtook the nation, interpreted as divine judgment. Even in the more pessimistic texts, however, satisfactory obedience is not thought impossible, though those who show it may be few (4 Ezra 7:[52–61]; 8:1–3; 2 Bar. 18:1–2; T. Ab. 11.12 [recension A]; L. A. B. 14:1, 4).

Torah and Party Division The party divisions within Second Temple Judaism witness both to the centrality of the law in Jewish life and thinking and to the inevitable disputes that arose in its implementation. 1. Torah as the Focus of Party Disputes. When the apostle Paul, looking back on his past, declares that, “as to the law,” he was a Pharisee (Phil 3:5), he indicates that belonging to the party of the Pharisees meant adopting a particular approach to the Mosaic code. The code itself was the common property of all Jews; the task of interpreting and applying it was thus common to all parties of Jews. What distinguished the parties most fundamentally (different beliefs about, e. g., the resurrection of the dead are mentioned in the sources as well) was their different approaches to the task: “as to the law,” one might be a Pharisee – or Sadducee, or Essene. In the context in Philippians, Paul appears to imply that allegiance to the Pharisees commanded respect beyond that attached to other parties. The implication is confirmed by the reference in Acts 26:5 to the Pharisees as “the strictest sect of our religion.” That the “sects” of the Jewish “religion” differed in strictness implies (again) that they all are concerned with the application of a particular code (in this case, Mosaic law); the Pharisees are reputed to excel others in the attention and care they devote to the task. A similar picture emerges from Josephus. Josephus himself (he tells us) adopted in turn the lifestyle of each of the three “sects” of his people, deciding in the end to “govern [his] life by the rules of the Pharisees” (Life 10–12). Elsewhere, he, too, speaks of the Pharisees’ reputation for “strictness” (Life 191; J. W. 1.110; 2.162). Finally, we may note that the “Halakhic Letter” (4QMMT) directed by a leader (the “Teacher of Righteousness” himself?) of the Qumran covenanters to opponents in Jerusalem makes clear that different understandings of various provisions in the Mosaic law code led to the separation of the covenanters from other Jews. 2. Problems of Implementing Mosaic Law. Such disputes were inevitable. Like any laws, those of Torah require interpretation; when circumstances change, their original terms may become impracticable; in any case, they

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are far from exhaustive. The laws of Sabbath and divorce serve to illustrate the problems. Scripture commands that no “work” is to be done on the Sabbath (Exod 20:10; 31:14–15; 35:2). Anyone intent on obeying the commandment must know whether a proposed course of action constitutes forbidden “work.” Not surprisingly, lists were compiled of forbidden undertakings (Jub. 2:29– 30; 50:6–13; CD X, 14–XI, 18; m. Shabbat 7:2). Scripture itself provided some guidance. Lighting a fire, for example, was explicitly excluded (Exod 35:3). Isaiah 58:13 calls on God’s people to honor the Sabbath by “not going [their] own ways.” “Ways” can certainly be taken to mean “journeys”; the verse then rules out Sabbath day travel, though it leaves unspecified what constitutes a forbidden journey. Exodus 16:29 (“Do not leave your place on the seventh day”) supports such an interpretation, though complicating matters still further by leaving to interpretation the definition of one’s “place.” The ambiguities were dealt with in various ways. Jubilees forbids going on a journey without defining the matter more closely (50:12). When closer definition was called for, the notion was adopted of a fixed distance from the edge of one’s city within which one was permitted to move. Acts 1:12 refers to a “sabbath day’s journey” of approximately 2000 cubits; the same figure is found in m. Sotah 5:3, where it is derived from the 2000 cubits of pasture land that Numbers 35:5 attaches to a town. For its part, the Damascus Code allows 2000 cubits only for one who was giving pasture to an animal; otherwise, 1000 cubits (based on Num 35:4) was the limit (CD X, 21; XI, 5–7). Jeremiah 17:22 – “Do not carry a burden out of your houses on the sabbath” – supplies further direction while also giving rise to further complications. Different understandings arose about what constituted a “burden.” Bearing arms at least was unthinkable (Josephus, Ant. 14.226; Life 161; Ag. Ap. 1.209); so (for the Jews of John 5:10) was bearing one’s mat. That “burdens” were not to be carried “out of … houses” (Jer 17:22) led in time to a distinction between one’s private domain and the public domain. The rule was formulated that nothing should be borne from one domain to another, although at least some vessels could be borne within the confines of one’s private domain (cf. CD XI, 7–9). Pharisees, anxious to facilitate communal meals while still upholding the letter of the law, introduced the legal fiction of “amalgamations”: various private “domains” in a single courtyard could be combined into one large “domain” within which vessels could be borne (see the Mishnah tractate Eruvin). Finally, we may note an incident in the Maccabean period in which Jews were slaughtered on the Sabbath while refusing to fight. Simple prudence prompted the subsequent decision to permit self-defense under attack even on the Sabbath (1 Macc 2:29–41).



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Deuteronomy 24:1 speaks of a man divorcing his wife because he finds “something objectionable [or “indecent”] about her.” Not all Jews took the expression to represent legitimate grounds for divorce. Jesus did not, citing Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 in his denunciation of divorce (Mark 10:2–9). Similarly, the Damascus Code condemns those who take two wives “in their lifetime,” also citing Genesis 1:27 in support (CD IV, 20–21). The wording seems at least to exclude remarriage after divorce (cf. 11Q19 [Temple Scroll] LVII, 17–18, which forbids a king to take a second wife, because only the first “shall be with him all the time of her life” [Vermes translation, as below for texts from Qumran]). Other Jews thought Deutereonomy 24:1 did indicate legitimate grounds for divorce, but were left to debate the definition of “something objectionable.” According to rabbinic texts (see Sifre Deuteronomy 269, on 24:1; m. Gittin 9:10), the schools of Hillel and Shammai disagreed on the issue. The Shammaites, focusing on the word “indecency,” concluded that a woman could only be divorced for shameful behavior. For the Hillelites, the operative word was “something.” Since it is very general, a husband might divorce his wife for any reason at all: the trivial example “even if she spoiled a dish for him” is cited to illustrate the point (m. Gittin 9:10; translation Danby, as below for texts from the Mishnah). 3. Approaches to Implementing Mosaic Law. Disputes about the implementation of Mosaic law were inevitable, and it is clear that such disputes divided the parties of Second Temple Judaism. Attempts to characterize their different approaches are not, however, without difficulty. In Ant. 13.297, Josephus distinguishes between the Pharisees and Sadducees in these terms: “The Pharisees had passed on to the people certain regulations handed down by former generations and not recorded in the Laws of Moses, for which reason they are rejected by the Sadducean group, who hold that only those regulations should be considered valid which were written down (in Scripture), and that those which had been handed down by former generations need not be observed.” What the Sadducees positively stood for cannot be gauged from this text, and, in the absence of texts from Sadducees themselves, their position remains unclear. Since they undoubtedly intended to carry out the prescriptions of Mosaic law, they can hardly have escaped the need to fill in the gaps and expand upon the ambiguities inherent in those prescriptions; perhaps they claimed that whatever supplementary traditions they followed were somehow inherent in the texts themselves. What is clear is that Sadducees rejected the extrabiblical traditions of the Pharisees. Reference to those traditions is found in the New Testament as well. According to Matthew 15:1–2, Pharisees accuse Jesus’ disciples of violating “the tradition of the elders.” Both the terminology and the accusation suggest a claim that the traditions represented no mere party law, but prac-

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tices rooted in customs from the past that (Pharisees believed) were now sanctioned by long use and appropriately followed by all Jews. There is no suggestion, here or in Josephus, of a further claim on the part of Pharisees that these traditions were given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. Opponents (Josephus’s Sadducees and the Jesus of the Synoptics) drew attention to the difference between the acknowledged (written) word of God, on the one hand, and the evident human origin of “traditions from the elders,” on the other, and rejected the latter on that basis (Matt 15:3–9; Mark 7:6–13). Though some measure of continuity must be assumed between the extrabiblical traditions of the Pharisees and the Oral Law that later rabbinic literature maintained was given, together with the Written Law, by God to Moses (Sifre Deuteronomy 351, on 33:10; cf. m. Avot 1:1), claims for the Mosaic origins of the Oral Law do not seem to have been advanced in the Second Temple period. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Pharisees are almost certainly targeted by the label “those who seek smooth things” (4Q169 [4QpNah] 3–4 II, 2, 4; III, 3, 6–7, etc.). The expression, derived from Isaiah 30:10, combines a favorite verb (‫דרש‬, drsh, “seek”) of rabbinic tradition for the deriving of laws by way of scriptural exegesis (midrash) with a noun (here rendered “smooth things”) that appears to be a pun on a favorite rabbinic term for its legal material (halakhah). If this is what is intended, it follows that the rabbinic terminology was in use already among the Pharisees. Clearly, the authors of the scrolls are as firm in their rejection of Pharisaic extrabiblical traditions as the Sadducees and Jesus, though with different motivation: the label “smooth things” implies a relaxation of the force of Torah’s demands. One of the purposes of extrabiblical tradition, according to rabbinic writings, is to “make a fence around the Law” (m. Avot 1:1; see 3:14; Mek. Pisha 6 [Lauterbach 1.46], on Exod 12:8); that is, to surround the commands of the written code with supplementary measures that would prevent even unwitting violation. Some scholars believe that references in the Damascus Code to “builders of the wall” (IV, 19; VIII, 12, 18) attest this ambition already among the Pharisees – at the same time as they disparage it. Perhaps implicit in the distinction that Pharisees drew between the written Torah and the extrabiblical “tradition of the elders” is a sense that the decisive revelation of Israel’s law, though the subject of continuing interpretation and supplementation, was given in the distant past (i. e., to Moses on Mount Sinai). What is clear is that the Qumran covenanters thought differently. While they pledged their allegiance to the Mosaic law, they regarded its correct interpretation as itself a product of divine, and ongoing, revelation. Hence, members committed themselves “to return with all [their] heart and soul to every commandment of the Law of Moses in accordance with all that has been revealed of it to the sons of Zadok, the



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Priests, Keepers of the Covenant and Seekers of His will” (1QS V, 8–9; cf. CD XV, 9–10). Elsewhere, too, the Community Rule refers to the need to conform to “all that has been revealed” (1QS I, 8–9; cf. VIII, 1–2, 15–16; IX, 17–19). Conversely, outsiders are condemned for their disinterest in “the hidden things in which they have sinfully erred” (V, 11); they have “treated” revealed matters “with insolence” (V, 12; according to CD V, 12, opponents rejected Qumran statutes as unfounded). The Damascus Code, speaking of the forerunners of the Qumran sectarians, indicates that, though they recognized their sin and sought God with a perfect heart, “for twenty years they were like blind men groping for the way” until God “raised for them a Teacher of Righteousness to guide them in the way of His heart” (I, 8–11). To this faithful remnant, God revealed “the hidden things in which all Israel had gone astray”; whoever “despises” these revelations “shall not live” (III, 13–17; note also VI, 2–11). Qumran understandings of the Mosaic law, which differed most notably from those of other Jews in their insistence on a solar calendar of 364 days and in the stringency of their purity concerns, were thus attributed to divine revelation granted to the founders and leaders of the community. It is thus not surprising that texts dealing with legal matters and claiming to be the products of divine revelation (Jubilees, Temple Scroll) are attested at Qumran.

Study of Torah as Worship A law given by God invites meditation and study as well as obedience. The meditation enjoined in Joshua 1:8 (“This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it”) has obedience as its explicit goal. But when meditation on the law (again carried on “day and night”) is paralleled with “delight … in the law of the LORD” in Psalm 1:2, it is clearly viewed as a good in itself. Psalm 19 praises the perfections of God’s commandments and finds them “more to be desired … than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb” (19:7–11, here v. 10).The psalmist of Psalm 119 refers not only to the “keeping” and “observing” of God’s commandments (vv. 2, 4, 5, 8, etc.), but also of “learning” them (v. 7 ), “treasuring” them (11), “meditating on” them (15), “delighting in” them (16), “longing for” them (20), “clinging to” them (31), “hoping in” them (43), even “loving” them (47). To seek and delight in God’s commandments is to seek and delight in God (119:2, 10, 12, etc.). The study of Torah played an important part in the life of the Qumran covenanters. The Community Rule makes provision both for the continuous study (“day and night,” as in Josh 1:8; Ps 1:2) of the law by individual

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members, each taking their turn, and (on the most likely interpretation) for the devotion of one-third of every night to its study by the whole community (1QS VI, 6–8). The most famous tractate of the Mishnah (Avot) illustrates the importance placed on the study of Torah in early rabbinic Judaism. That one must know the commandments to keep them is taken for granted (“an ignorant man cannot be saintly,” 2:6; cf. 1:13; 3:18); that observance of what is commanded must follow the acquiring of knowledge is underlined (1:17; 3:18; 4:5). Reward is promised for the study of the law (2:16; 3:2; 4:10); yet no merit must be claimed for such study, for human beings were created for that very purpose (2:8). Where ten people gather – or five, three, even two – and occupy themselves with the study of the Law, God’s presence rests among them. Indeed, it rests on single individuals when they study God’s law (3:6). And where people discuss God’s law at their meal table, “it is as if they had eaten from the table of God” (3:3). Bibliography Anderson, Gary A. “The Status of the Torah before Sinai.” Dead Sea Discoveries 1 (1994): 1–29. Barclay, John M. G. Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE – 117 CE). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Baumgarten, Albert I. The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Baumgarten, Joseph M. Studies in Qumran Law. Leiden: Brill, 1977. Boccaccini, Gabriele, editor. Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. Bockmuehl, Markus. “Natural Law in Second Temple Judaism.” Vetus Testamentum 45 (1995): 17–44. Carson, D. A., Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid, editors. Justification and Variegated Nomism. Vol. 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001. Danby, Herbert, translator. The Mishnah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933. Himmelfarb, Martha. “The Torah Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Difference in Antiquity.” In Ancient Judaism in its Hellenistic Context, edited by Carol Bakhos. Leiden: Brill, 2005, 113–129. Horsley, Richard A. “The Law of Nature in Philo and Cicero.” Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 35–59. Lauterbach, Jacob Z., editor and translator. Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael. Vols. 1–3. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976. Levenson, Jon D. “The Sources of Torah: Psalm 119 and the Modes of Revelation in Second Temple Judaism.” In Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, edited by Patrick D. Miller, Jr., Paul D. Hanson, and S. Dean McBride. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987, 559–574. Nickelsburg, George W. E. “Enochic Wisdom: An Alternative to the Mosaic Torah?” In Hesed ve-Emet: Studies in Honor of Ernest S. Frerichs, edited by Jodi Magness and Seymour Gitin. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998, 123–133.



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Sanders, E. P. Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990. – Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE – 66 CE. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992. Sanders, Jack T. “When Sacred Canopies Collide: The Reception of the Torah of Moses in the Wisdom Literature of the Second-Temple Period.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 32 (2001): 121–136. Schechter, Solomon. Aspects of Rabbinic Theology. New York: Schocken Books, 1961. Schiffman, Lawrence H. Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994. Vermes, Geza. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2004. Viviano, Benedict Thomas. Study as Worship: Aboth and the New Testament. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978.

Chapter 3

Torah, nomos, and Law: A Question of “Meaning” There is no mistaking the fact: Julius Wellhausen had little use for law.1 The very word smacked of institutions, authority, norms, and constraints – the mortal foes of the free spirit, the natural impulse, the open air. Since a traditional view regarded law as playing a significant, even central role in the Old Testament, one might have expected Wellhausen to dismiss in Marcionite fashion the first three-quarters of the Christian Bible without regret; in fact, however, he followed a middle course. By arguing that the law was preceded by the prophets (who were themselves free spirits all), he was able to discern much of eternal value in the Hebrew scriptures even though, lamentably, the preoccupation of later Judaism with the Torah, its code of law, meant that it had to be written off as an “immense retrogression.” And so was born a scholarly consensus that saw postexilic Judaism as narrow-minded and legalistic, a serious decline from the religion of the prophets.2 Wellhausen, for all his brilliance, was a child of his times. So, too, was Solomon Schechter, though he for his part was not one to rest content with a description of Second Temple Judaism that saw it as suffering under a “‘Night of Legalism,’ from the darkness of which religion only emerges by a miracle supposed to have taken place about the year 30 of our era.”3 And, of course, there were many angles from which the charge of legalism could be countered. It could, for example, be argued that law is not really such a bad thing after all, that society can ill afford to be without it, that religious movements themselves need norms if they are to have coherence; that, moreover, it is no mean thing to be entrusted with the statutes of the One who spoke and the world came into being, and, furthermore, their observance need not be formal, external, and joyless. But Schechter, perhaps feeling that the opprobrium attached to notions of “law” was too great to be overcome, chose a tack that allowed him to circumvent the entire problem, a counter-offensive that was bound to catch the critics of Jewish law off their guard: they are mistaken, Schechter claimed, in even thinking that the Hebrew word torah means “law.” And so a counter consensus was conceived. 1 

Biblical quotations are taken from the Revised Standard Version. See Westerholm, “Whence ‘The Torah,’” 19–43. 3 Schechter, Aspects, 117. 2 

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Since Schechter’s claims were destined both to influence and to confuse the scholarly discussion, it is important to cite him here at some length. Intending to prove that legalism has never “constituted the whole religion of the Jew, as declared by most modern critics,” Schechter argued as follows: It must first be stated that the term Law or Nomos is not a correct rendering of the Hebrew word Torah. The legalistic element, which might rightly be called the Law, represents only one side of the Torah. To the Jew the word Torah means a teaching or an instruction of any kind. … It is true that in Rabbinic literature the term Torah is often applied to the Pentateuch to the exclusion of the Prophets and the Hagiographa. … But even the Pentateuch is no mere legal code, without edifying elements in it. The book of Genesis, the greater part of Exodus, and even a part of Numbers are simple history. … Thus Torah, even as represented by the Pentateuch, is not mere Law, the Rabbis having discerned and appreciated in it other than merely legal elements. Moreover, the term Torah is not always confined to the Pentateuch. It also extends, as already indicated, to the whole of the Scriptures. … To the Jew, as already pointed out, the term Torah implied a teaching or instruction, and was therefore wide enough to embrace the whole of the Scriptures. … It is the Torah as the sum total of the contents of revelation, without special regard to any particular element in it, the Torah as a faith, that is so dear to the Rabbi.4

Now it seems to me that already in the first three sentences quoted above there is an ambiguity that ever since Schechter has dogged the debate. Is Schechter discussing the meaning of the word torah in general, or is his concern more specifically the contents of “the Torah,” using the word in its developed, technical sense as a designation for the Pentateuch, or for all of the sacred scriptures, or even for “the sum total of the contents of revelation”? The former subject seems to be the issue in the first and third sentences, though the statements lack the precision one would expect of a semantic discussion. Whose usage of torah is Schechter discussing? Is he suggesting that the word had never been used in any context in which it could be rendered adequately by the English “law” or the Greek nomos, that “teaching” or “instruction” is always to be preferred? Schechter does not spell these matters out. The latter issue is clearly the subject of the second sentence and of much of the subsequent discussion. Yet these are separate issues. Statements about the latter question have only a limited bearing upon the former. The point is significant enough to merit illustration. The second “book” of the Pentateuch is traditionally called Exodus; the title comes from the Greek word exodos, for which an adequate English rendering would frequently be “departure.” The title has, of course, been adopted because 4 Schechter,

Aspects, 117, 118–119. 121, 125, 127.



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the book contains (together with other material) the story of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt. Now anyone dealing with Exodus today must be aware of the variety of material contained in the book; on the other hand, no one would think of arguing that, since our Exodus contains more than the story of the Israelites’ “departure,” the Greek word exodos must always have meant something other, something broader, than “departure.” To take a still more obvious example: the label “drug store” is taken from one of the important items in a store’s stock of materials; yet no one is inclined to stretch the definition of “drug” to include all the items for sale in a drug store. Now Schechter’s main concern is obviously to use the multifarious nature of the traditional material collectively called torah to demonstrate that legalism is not “the whole religion of the Jews.” This is a legitimate, indeed, a sufficient argument. On the other hand, it must be recognized that Schechter has not provided, and presumably never intended to provide, an adequate semantic study of the word torah. He makes no attempt to trace the shifts in meaning that the word has undergone over the centuries, or even to deny that such shifts have taken place. Above all, it must be noted that he has not proven (or even undertaken to prove) that the word torah has never meant “law,” that it has always meant “teaching.” His point is simply that “the Torah” includes more than law. Yet it is, I suspect, the ambiguity inherent in his discussion that has given rise to simplistic, categorical claims about what the word torah has “always” meant, frequently with the same failure to distinguish between the question of the semantic force of the word torah (which has shifted over the centuries) and what “the Torah,” in one of its developed, technical senses, contains. In Jewish usage these five books were and still are known by the collective name of the Torah. This alone shows that Torah is wrongly translated by “Law,” because there is a great deal in the Pentateuch which is not law at all.5 Greek Jews nowhere raised the question of whether Torah really means nomos, law! … To Palestinian Jews, and their spiritual descendants, the word Torah never had so restricted a connotation; they equated Torah with our word “revelation.” … It is true, the legal portion of the Torah uses such terms as judgment, statute, commandment, and (especially in Priestly writings) torah, with a small t, to describe an individual requirement. But the Torah, with a capital T, also included exhortation (as in the pre-exilic prophets), prayer (as in the Psalter), prudential wisdom (as in Proverbs), and the like.6 The word Torah is only very imperfectly translated by “Law.” … It contained far more than mere “precept” or laws.7 5 Herford,

Judaism, 31. Genius, 47. 7 Parkes, Conflict, 35–36. 6 Sandmel,

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And when the Torah is called “the Law,” the error is that only the Halachah is Law; the Haggadah is not Law.8 The word “Torah” will be used throughout this book, untranslated. It does not, and never did, mean “Law.” It means, and always has meant, “Teaching.”9

Obviously, such sweeping statements require a substantiation that Schechter has not provided. Frequently, however, the general claim that torah does not mean nomos or “law” and, in particular, the criticisms brought against Hellenistic Judaism on that basis are made in the belief that C. H. Dodd has provided the necessary documentation. Certainly, without his chapter on “The Law” in The Bible and the Greeks we may say (with apologies to Hezekiah) that our counter consensus might have been conceived, but it would never have come to birth. It is important, however, to note what that chapter does, and what it does not, say. Dodd does not, for example, suggest that torah is never correctly rendered by nomos; the contrary is the case. The substantive torah accordingly means direction or instruction. Thus it is used of the instruction given by parents to their children or by wise men to their pupils. But it is most specifically used of guidance or instruction coming from God Himself; and chiefly in two ways, through the oracular utterances or responses of the priests at the sanctuary, and through the prophets. The priestly toroth were primarily concerned with ritual and ceremonial observance, but they appear to have been given also upon points of individual and social morals. Thus the term torah could be used collectively both of the priestly code of ceremonial observance … and also, by an extension of meaning, of the code of commandments, statutes and judgments contained in Deuteronomy, since one principal source of these was actually the collection of priestly toroth at Jerusalem and perhaps at other sanctuaries. It is in this sense that torah can fairly be regarded as equivalent to nomos.10

What Dodd objects to is that nomos is used in the Septuagint in cases where the Hebrew torah is “of a different character,” which he refers to as prophetic, and where it amounts to “instruction in the principles of religion.” “Torah is for the prophets divine revelation in the widest sense, appealing to heart, mind, and will. It may include positive precepts, but it includes much more.” To render this usage of torah by nomos is, according to Dodd, “thoroughly misleading.” It is at this point that Dodd introduces his famous characterization of Hellenistic Judaism (influenced by C. G. Montefiore?): a lengthy quotation is again in order. While the translation is often misleading as a representation of the original meaning, it is most instructive in its bearing upon Hellenistic Judaism. It is clear that for the Jews of Egypt in the Hellenistic period the developed meaning of torah as a code 8 Herford,

Judaism, 58. Talmud, 7 n. 10 Dodd, Bible and the Greeks, 30–31. 9 Herford,



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of religious observance, a “law” for a religious community, was the normal and regulative meaning, and they made this meaning cover the whole use of the word in the Old Testament. Thus the prophetic type of religion was obscured, and the Biblical revelation was conceived in a hard legalistic way. In thus rendering the term the translators are no doubt reflecting the sense in which their community read the Hebrew Bible, but their rendering helped to fix and stereotype that sense. Where thinkers bred in Hellenistic Judaism sought to escape into a religion of greater spiritual freedom and spontaneity, it was not by any way of return to the prophetic idea of torah, but by taking up a fresh attitude to religion conceived as Law. Philo accepted the Law as such and allegorized it; Paul declared that Judaism, being a legal religion, was superseded by the religion of the Spirit.11

In what is clearly a sequel to Dodd’s chapter, the equation of torah and nomos has since been held responsible for numberless woes. Nothing has contributed more to the misunderstanding between the two religions [Judaism and Christianity] than the fact that the Septuagint translated the word “Torah” by the narrower word nomos and the English still further reduced the meaning by rendering nomos as law.12 Another important tendency of the [Septuagint], which is reflected in a distorted form in Paul, is the following: the tendency to ethicize Judaism, to understand it as moral law, disconnected from the controlling reality of the covenant.13 The Graeco-Jewish equation of Torah and law was picked up and propagated by church fathers; this dubious identification appears in some of the scholarship of our own day. Out of the misunderstanding of what Torah meant to rabbinic Jews, there emerged two reactions among Protestants, in particular since the 1870’s: (1) the identification of Judaism with “legalism” and (2) a supercilious and condescending attitude both to Judaism and to legalism itself.14

If only the Seventy had known better! The position of the apostle Paul in the discussion shifts between that of the innocent victim of the Septuagint and that of a culpable perpetrator of the mischief. From Dodd’s treatment, he emerges with only a slight reprimand; with others, he has not fared so well. In the [Septuagint] there takes place with the translation torah – nomos – a shift of emphasis towards legalism. … We shall see later (ch. 5) that the source of many Pauline misunderstandings with regard to the evaluation of the law and covenant is to be sought in the legalistic distortion of the perspective for which Hellenistic Judaism was responsible.15 Now when Paul speaks of the Jewish nomos he implies a twofold curtailment, which was obviously customary in the Diaspora: in the first place he has reduced the Torah, which means for the Jews both law and teaching, to the ethical (and ritual) law; 11 Dodd,

Bible and the Greeks, 31–34. Foundations, xv. 13 Schoeps, Paul, 29. 14 Sandmel, Genius, 48. 15 Schoeps, Paul, 29. 12 Parkes,

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secondly, he has wrested and isolated the law from the controlling context of God’s covenant with Israel.16 Torah does not mean Law, and never did, and the example of Paul, who did most to perpetuate the mischievous error, does not justify either himself or those who have imitated him.17 Paul, who as a former Jew did not know what else there was in Torah besides Halachah, has inflicted upon the Jews an injury without excuse by steadily ignoring that other element, in order to build upon that omission his argument for the superiority of the Gospel over the Law.18 To debase divine instruction (a concept which linguistically as well as regarding content, corresponds to Torah) by equating it with the narrow-minded word nomos (the law) – all of this is an absurd caricature which finds its source in Paul.19

Against this, it must be said (1) that there are indeed contexts in the Hebrew scriptures where torah is most adequately rendered nomos or “law”; (2) that these include the Deuteronomistic usage, the critical point in the development of “the torah” as a technical term that, ultimately, would stand for the Pentateuch as a whole; hence, nomos and “law” are quite justified as titles for the Pentateuch; and (3) that Paul’s usage of nomos to mean the sum of obligations given to Israel on Mount Sinai is fully in line with Hebrew usage of torah. If he speaks differently of the role of Torah in the divine scheme than the rabbis did, this is due to other factors than a supposed misunderstanding of what torah means. 1. “What was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have exactly the same sense when translated into another tongue.” These famous words from the introduction to the Greek translation of Sirach may, of course, be applied to any work in translation – including the glossing of a single word in one language with an equivalent in another. Any attempt to suggest a word in English (or Greek) as the “meaning” of torah should be accompanied by an awareness that “words only partially overlap between languages,” that “complete equivalence is never the case between words in different languages.”20 Hence, we are really discussing which renderings of torah in a given context are more or less adequate rather than arguing that one or other English term is its exact equivalent. James Barr puts the problem in a fair perspective: It is an obvious and perpetual problem of all lexicography that substitutions can never be completely adequate in many cases. But it is also true that substitutes 16 Schoeps,

Paul, 213. Judaism, 30–31. 18 Herford, Pharisees, 78. 19 Lapide, Paul, 39. 20 Louw, Semantics, 43. 17 Herford,



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should not be totally inadequate or misleading; and it is a presupposition of lexicography that a good proportion of valid and intelligible (though always provisional) substitutions can be made.21

Another crucial principle of semantics needs to be mentioned here. It is a fallacy to imagine that the “proper” or “basic” sense of a word is determined by its etymology, or its usage in the past.22 However interesting the history of a word may be, its “meaning” must be arrived at or tested in each context in which it occurs. “A word does not have a meaning without a context, it only has possibilities of meaning.”23 One can never say what sarx means, but only what it means in this or that context. From all these contexts a picture of the different possibilities of meaning signified by sarx can be built up. And even then one still does not have the meaning, but only the possibilities of meaning. In a specific context, however, one can justifiably say that sarx means this or that. To always award one meaning to one word is incorrect since it denies the basic fact of polysemy.24

Thus, while it is fair to say that torah may in a particular context mean “instruction” rather than “law,” to make the claim in an unqualified way based on a particular usage, or an understanding of the word’s etymology, is not legitimate. Torah does not “basically” or “properly” mean one thing or another, though, of course, its usage in a particular sense may be more frequent than in another. The simple fact is that there are many cases in the Hebrew scriptures where “law” is clearly a more adequate rendering of torah than “instruction” or “teaching” or “revelation.” How the word came to have the meaning “law” is not certain, for its etymology and history of usage are still matters of dispute.25 Wellhausen, for example, thought that the term was “originally 21 Barr,

Semantics, 216. good example is English ‘nice,’ derived from Latin nescius ‘ignorant.’ The meaning of the Latin word from which the derivation has taken place is no guide at all to the sense of this common word in modern usage. Nevertheless there is a normative strain in the thought of many people about language, and they feel that in some sense the ‘original,’ the ‘etymological meaning,’ should be a guide to the usage of words, that the words are used ‘properly’ when they coincide in sense with the sense of the earliest known form from which their derivation can be traced” (Barr, Semantics, 107). 23 Louw, Semantics, 40. 24 Louw, Semantics, 39–40. 25  See especially Östborn, Tō rā . Since Östborn, it has become customary to mention three alternative explanations of the word’s etymology: that of Gesenius (from a particular usage of the hif ’il of yrh to mean “to cast one’s hand,” hence “to indicate with the hand,” and ultimately “to instruct”); that of Wellhausen (again, from a usage of the hif ’il of yrh for the obtaining of directives by casting lots, extended then to “direction” or “instruction” in general); and that of Delitzsch (from Akkadian tē rtu, “oracle”). It has also become customary to divide up the usage of torah in Hebrew scripture into priestly, prophetic, and sapiential categories. The basic study of priestly torah is that of Begrich, “Tora.” A distinctive prophetic torah is denied by Jensen, “Use.” See also 22 “A

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used of decisions, particularly legal decisions, such as were determined in doubtful cases by means of casting lots”; it was then gradually applied to the established law also – to “the law” in its entirety.”26 Others think the term originally meant “instruction” in a general sense, but, from instances where the divine requirements were the substance of the “instruction,” came to mean “law.”27 In any case, where a torah is (or where toroth are) said to be “commanded” to be “done” or “kept” and not “transgressed,” then “law” (or “laws”) would seem to be a more adequate rendering than a general term such as “teaching.” … because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. (Gen 26:5) And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the passover. … There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.” (Exod 12:43, 49) And the LORD said to Moses, “How long do you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws?” (Exod 16:28) These are the statutes and ordinances and laws which the LORD made between him and the people of Israel on Mount Sinai by Moses. (Lev 26:46) They have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes. (Isa 24:5) They did not obey thy voice or walk in thy law; they did nothing of all thou didst command them to do. (Jer 32:23) … to the end that they should keep his statutes, and observe his laws. (Ps 105:45)

Many other examples could of course be given. 2. As we have seen, torah would in time become a technical term for a collection of traditional material (the Pentateuch, or all of the sacred scriptures, or the “sum total of the contents of revelation”). The point to be made here is that this technical usage has developed out of the Deuteronomistic usage, where, apparently, the singular torah is first used for a specific collection of traditional material;28 and that, in this usage, the material collected is made Engnell, Law; Robert, “Sens”; Smith, “Use.” The discussion of torah in the Pentateuch in Monsengwo Pasinya, Notion, 62–89, is, in my opinion, vitiated by the preconceived notion that torah must not mean “law.” (Note his approval of Schechter, page 66.) At least I cannot otherwise explain the convoluted reasoning by which, e. g., torah is said to mean “alliance” rather than “loi” in Exod 12:49 (70–71; similarly, page 80, of Num 15:16, 29), or that which insists on a fundamental distinction between the divere hattorah and torah in Deuteronomy, the former referring, admittedly, to laws, while the latter means “la doctrine divine, la révélation, l’alliance” (81–88). 26  So summarized by Östborn, Tōrā , 36 n. 3. Cf. Engnell, Israel, 14–15. Note especially Exod 18:16. 27 Östborn, Tōrā , 22, 35, 61, 170. Also Jensen, Use, 29. 28  See especially Lindars, “Torah.” Also Clements, Theology, 107–108; Jensen, Use,



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up of “statutes and ordinances,” so that torah as a designation for the whole is correctly rendered nomos or “law.” What the Deuteronomistic literature means by “this torah” (or “the torah of Moses,” or “this book of the torah,” or “the book of the torah of Moses,” etc.) is clear enough: it is the substance of the Deuteronomic code, the sum of the covenant responsibilities imposed upon the people of Israel by their Sovereign on Mount Sinai, and accompanied by fearful sanctions.29 No translation of torah in this context is perfect; nonetheless, “law” is here surely the most adequate. 30 And what great nation is there, that has statutes and ordinances so righteous as all this law which I set before you this day? (Deut 4:8) … if you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law. (Deut 30:10) Lay to heart all the words which I enjoin upon you this day, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. (Deut 32:46) Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. (Josh 1:7) And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the book of the law. (Josh 8:34; cf. Deut 29:20 [Eng. trans., 29:21]) And keep the charge of the LORD your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his ordinances, and his testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses. (1 Kgs 2:3) Yet the LORD warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the law which I commanded your fathers.” (2 Kgs 17:13)

Now this Deuteronomistic usage of torah to refer to a collection that spells out Israel’s covenantal obligations is taken up in the later literature of the

16, 65; Smith, “Use,” 18. It is still disputed whether the use of torah in such texts as Hos 4:6; 8:1; Amos 2:4 adumbrates the peculiarly Deuteronomistic usage or is a redactional reflection of that usage. 29  Cf. Clements, Theology, 110. Note also the interesting parallels drawn by Östborn, Tōrā , 40–44: “‘The book of the covenant’ thus expresses the will of a king in relation to his people, and it is therefore with some reason that one may regard this ‘book’ as a ‘book of law.’ … It is therefore in keeping for Moses to play a part equivalent to Hammurabi’s: to appear as supreme leader of the people and transmitter of god’s will, ‘law.’ … The provisions of the covenant on Sinai … may thus be regarded as equivalent to the ‘laws,’ otherwise promulgated by the kings – on behalf of the divinity.” 30  Cf. Braulik, “Ausdrücke,” 65; Östborn, Tōrā , 54; Robert, “Sens,” 205.

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Hebrew Bible as well, though now extended to include, for example, the Priestly Code.31 Again, “law” (or nomos) is a natural and correct rendering. All Israel has transgressed thy law and turned aside, refusing to obey thy voice. And the curse and oath which are written in the law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out upon us, because we have sinned against him. (Dan 9:11) And they found it written in the law that the LORD had commanded by Moses that the people of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month. (Neh 8:14) Thou didst come down upon Mount Sinai, and speak with them from heaven and give them right ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments, and thou didst make known to them thy holy sabbath and command them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses thy servant. (Neh 9:13–14) Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept thy law or heeded thy commandments. (Neh 9:34)

Perhaps the most interesting passage in this context (though its significance has seldom been noticed) is Ezra 7:12–26.32 The passage, in Aramaic, refers to “the law of the God of heaven” (7:12), “the law of your God” (7:14, 26); Ezra is referred to as a “scribe of the law of the God of heaven” (7:21). The Aramaic word used (dāth) is well attested meaning “decree,” “law” (cf. Dan 6:9, 13, 16 [Eng. trans., 6:8, 12, 15]: “the law of the Medes and the Persians,” etc.) Here it is clearly being used as the equivalent of the Hebrew torah: in the immediate context, Ezra is called “a scribe skilled in the law (torah) of Moses which the LORD the God of Israel had given” in 7:6 (cf. 7:21), one who “set his heart to study the law (torah) of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach his statutes and ordinances in Israel” (7:10). Clearly, the Septuagint was not original in translating torah with a word meaning “law.” And, one would think, those who condemn the Septuagint version and Hellenistic Jewry for rendering torah as nomos ought to apply the same judgment to the author and community of Ezra! That the scope of “the torah of Moses” was later extended, becoming a title for the whole of the Pentateuch, is a natural development;33 and, naturally, the Greek followed suit and spoke of the Pentateuch as ho nomos. It does not follow that, compared to Palestinian Judaism, Hellenistic Judaism was more “legalistic.”34 Nor does it follow that Hellenistic Jews forgot that the stories of Genesis were a part of the Pentateuch as well as the laws of Exodus. If Philo speaks at times of Genesis as a kind of prologue to the laws,35 31 

Cf. Lindars, “Torah,” 120–121. For the following, see Schaeder, Esra, 44. 33  Cf. Clements, Theology, 110–120; Urbach, Sages, 1.289. 34  Cf. Urbach, Sages, 1.289. 35 Sandmel, Genius, 47. 32 



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the same can certainly be said of the rabbis.36 In short, though a reminder of the scope of “the Torah” may well be in order, Hellenistic Judaism can scarcely be faulted for labelling it “the law”; the title, in both Hebrew and Greek, has grown out of its Deuteronomistic usage, where it means “law.” 3. Finally, a brief word on Pauline usage is in order. Though Paul occasionally uses nomos in contexts where the Hebrew torah would be less appropriate, such cases are the exception, not the rule.37 He does use nomos (as the rabbis use torah) to refer to the Pentateuch as a whole (e. g., Rom 3:21) or even the Hebrew scriptures in general (1 Cor 14:21). Usually, however, Paul means by nomos the sum of the obligations imposed upon Israel at Mount Sinai, with the accompanying sanctions (Rom 2:12, 17–18; 5:13–14; 7:12; 10:5; Gal 3:10, 12, 17, etc.) – a precise equivalent of the usage of torah in Deuteronomistic and later literature, as we have seen. That Paul’s understanding of the place of the “law” in the divine scheme is radically different from that of the rabbis is self-evident; but this is hardly a consequence of his use of the Greek term nomos. I conclude. The depiction of “life under the law” by Wellhausen and others is little better than a caricature. But the way to correct it is not by simplistic and misleading claims that torah does not mean, and never has meant, “law.” Since Schechter and Dodd, such statements evidently have the force of axioms for many, and Hellenistic Judaism and its representatives have been held responsible for all manner of subsequent evils. But on this score at least they may be absolved. Torah may very well mean “law.” Bibliography Barr, James. The Semantics of Biblical Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961. Begrich, Joachim. “Die priesterliche Tora.” Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 66 (1936): 63–88. Braulik, Georg. “Die Ausdrücke für ‘Gesetz’ im Buch Deuteronomium.” Biblica 51 (1970): 39–66. Clements, Ronald E. Old Testament Theology. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1978. Dodd, C. H. The Bible and the Greeks. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1935. Engnell, Ivan. Israel and the Law. Uppsala: Wretmans boktryckeri, 1954. Herford, R. Travers. Judaism in the New Testament Period. London: Lindsey, 1928. – The Pharisees. New York: Macmillan, 1924. – Talmud and Apocrypha. New York: Ktav, 1971. Jensen, Joseph. The Use of tora by Isaiah. Washington: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1973. 36 Urbach, 37 

Sages, 1.315–317. Cf. Dodd, Bible and the Greeks, 36.

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Lapide, Pinchas and Peter Stuhlmacher. Paul: Rabbi and Apostle. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984. Lindars, Barnabas. “Torah in Deuteronomy.” In Words and Meanings: Essays Presented to David Winton Thomas, edited by Peter R. Ackroyd and Barnabas Lindars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968, 117–136. Louw, J. P. Semantics of New Testament Greek. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982. Monsengwo Pasinya, Laurent. La notion de nomos dans le pentateuque grec. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1973. Östborn, Gunnar. Tōrā in the Old Testament. Lund: Håkan Ohlssons Boktryckeri, 1945. Parkes, James. The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue. London: Soncino, 1934. – The Foundations of Judaism and Christianity. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1960. Robert, A. “Le sens du mot loi dans le Psaume CXIX.” Revue biblique 46 (1937): 182–206. Sandmel, Samuel. The Genius of Paul. Third edition. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Schaeder, Hans Heinrich. Esra der Schreiber. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1930. Schechter, Solomon. Aspects of Rabbinic Theology. New York: Schocken Books, 1961. Schoeps, Hans Joachim. Paul. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961. Smith, Louise Pettibone. “The Use of the Word Torah in Isaiah, Chapters 1–39.” American Journal of Semitic Languages 46 (1929): 1–21. Urbach, Ephraim E. The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, Vol. 1. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975. Westerholm, Stephen. “Whence ‘The Torah’ of Second Temple Judaism.” In Peter Richardson and Stephen Westerholm, with A. I. Baumgarten, Michael Pettem, and Cecilia Wassén, Law in Religious Communities in the Roman Period: The Debate over Torah and Nomos in Post-biblical Judaism and Early Christianity. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991, 19–43.

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Paul’s Anthropological “Pessimism” in its Jewish Context “Can mortals be righteous before God?” (Job 4:17, NRSV). If God is the Lord who loves righteousness and hates iniquity, then few questions can rival this one in importance. Yet Jews and Christians, whose God is the Lord,1 have responded in a variety of ways. For Timo Laato, the “greatest weakness in the argumentation” of E. P. Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism is its “inadequate coverage of the question of the capacity of humankind.”2 Judaism sees human beings as possessing “free will” (67) and, with it, the capacity both to choose and to do good instead of evil. “Apparently everyone has an inborn propensity, but not hereditary compulsion to disobedience. It is fully conceivable to the very end to be obedient to the law” (73). Paul, however, thought Adam’s sin brought upon human beings the “wretched state of calamity” in which sin rules and humans find themselves unable to do, or even to choose, the good (75). In short, “the anthropological presuppositions of the Jewish and the Pauline patterns of religion clearly differ from one another. The former is based on human free will, while the latter is founded on human depravity” (146). In Sanders’s work, however, “the anthropological approach to the respective religions is not sufficiently taken into account.” This deficiency must be corrected if we are to “attain a convincing explanation of the break between Paul and Judaism” (2). The distinction Laato proposes is sufficiently plausible to merit investigation. Certainly, writers on Judaism have long been anxious to distinguish their subject from Christian notions of the “fall” and “depravity” of humankind.3 Sanders himself is among them. In discussing whether we may speak appropriately of Jewish “soteriology,” he notes that the term “may imply that all are in need of a salvation which they do not possess, thus 1  Indeed, if we follow Gabrielle Boccaccini in defining Judaism as “the monotheistic religion of YHWH,” then Christianity itself “has never ceased to be a Judaism” (Boccaccini, Roots, 35.) The definition captures important truths about the origin and nature of Christianity; actual usage of the term “Judaism,” however, both ancient (see, e. g., Gal 1:13, 14!) and modern, tends to be more restrictive. 2 Laato, Paul and Judaism, 62. 3  E. g., Lapide, in Lapide and Stuhlmacher, Paul, 44–47; Montefiore, Judaism and St. Paul, 78; Schoeps, Paul, 187–188, 193–194.

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further implying a concept of original sin. … Since a concept of original or even universal sin is missing in most forms of Judaism, such connotations would be unfortunate.”4 The stage would seem to be set for a sharp distinction to be drawn between “most forms of Judaism” and Paul, whose “soteriology” is routinely discussed without any of these qualms. Later, Sanders writes: It is important to note that the Rabbis did not have a doctrine of original sin or of the essential sinfulness of each man in the Christian sense. It is a matter of observation that all men sin. Men have, apparently, the inborn drive towards rebellion and disobedience. But this is not the same as being born in a state of sinfulness from which liberation is necessary. Sin comes only when man actually disobeys; if he were not to disobey he would not be a sinner. The possibility exists that one might not sin. Despite the tendency to disobey, man is free to obey or disobey. The lack of a doctrine of original sin in the Augustinian sense is an important point to be grasped if one is to understand Rabbinic “soteriology” or the nature and quality of Jewish religious life.5

Here the position that Sanders opposes to that of “the rabbis” – “a doctrine of original sin or of the essential sinfulness of each man”; the notion that humans are “born in a state of sinfulness from which liberation is necessary” – is labeled “Christian” and “Augustinian.” But the “Christian” and “Augustinian” position on these matters derives from the writings of Paul. May we not, then, conclude that “the rabbis” (and other Jews) differ significantly from Paul on the sinfulness of humankind? Yet further investigation remains in order. Sanders himself (as Laato notes) does not focus on the issue. For his part, Laato apparently regards Jewish “optimism” (in contrast to Pauline “pessimism”) in this regard as too self-evident to require extensive documentation;6 and the possibility of diversity within Judaism (or, as some would have it, within the Judaisms) of the turn of the era is not explored. A more broadly based comparison of the anthropology of Paul with that of other Jews of his period seems very much in order. Is the apostle, in his assessment of (untransformed)7 humanity’s capacity to do good, as pessimistic as Laato proposes? If so (and certainly there are explicit statements in Paul’s letters to support Laato’s point),8 to what does Paul attribute humanity’s moral impotence? By way 4 Sanders,

Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 17–18. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 114–115. 6  After discussing for six pages the “anthropological presuppositions of the Jewish … pattern of religion,” Laato concludes: “In summary, it appears that free will in the domain of soteriology among the Jews from Sirach until the Babylonian Talmud was opinio communis. A single (important) exception confirms the rule: the Qumran community seems to represent an absolute fatalism” (Paul and Judaism, 72). 7  Paul’s views of the possibility of Christian sin (or even of its inevitability, as Romans 7, on one common understanding, implies) lie beyond the scope of this paper. 8  Sanders grants the existence of such statements but disputes (on various grounds) 5 Sanders,



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of comparison, does the anthropological “optimism” that Laato, citing only a few (primarily rabbinic) texts, finds characteristic of Judaism in fact dominate Jewish literature of the period?9 Is it everywhere assumed that there are righteous people to be found, or are there texts that share Paul’s (pessimistic) view that “there is none righteous” (Rom 3:10)?10 Should a similar pessimism be attested, on what considerations is it grounded? One way or the other, the comparison should serve to highlight distinctive features of Paul’s anthropology and to contextualize what he shares with others. The project appears both eminently worthwhile and utterly unmanageable. Only a beginning can be made here. In this paper, Pauline anthropology itself will be accorded only the most summary of treatments: I shall highlight a few theses that I take to be true without the argumentation or documentation required of a full-scale discussion.11 As for the writings of other Jews, to confine our attention to a few selected sources would leave unanswered (as Laato’s study, citing limited evidence, leaves unanswered) whether, or to what extent, Pauline “pessimism” has parallels in the literature of the period.12 What is needed is rather a survey of the literature – in this their importance to Paul’s thinking: they represent arguments Paul develops to support a point rather than his settled convictions. Cf. my discussion in Israel’s Law, 151–164. 9  The survey below covers literature from the same period as that treated in Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism: roughly speaking, from 200 BCE to 200 CE with the upper limit stretched somewhat (as in Sanders’s work) to include tannaitic literature (here represented by Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael). Treatment of literature clearly later than Paul seems warranted since my purposes are not genealogical but heuristic. (In this regard, my approach here is closer to that of Alexander, “Predestination”; Barclay, “Grace and Agency”; and Engberg-Pedersen, “Self-Sufficiency” [among other contributors to the symposium that produced the volume Divine and Human Agency in Paul] than to that of Boccaccini, “Debate.”) The question here being asked of a variety of Jewish texts arises out of a reading of Paul; it seems scarcely an issue in many of the texts themselves. This does not make it an illegitimate question to raise; but Watson, “Antithesis,” rightly reminds us that different starting-points would lead to very different emphases (see also Watson, Hermeneutics, 527–528). 10  Though my inquiry is not unrelated to the issue of the origins of sin among human beings, it is a different question. Even where human sin is traced to superhuman forces (e. g., humans are believed to have been misled into sin by demonic persons), it need not follow that humans are deemed incapable of doing good. Conversely, those who attribute human sinfulness to human beings themselves may not think humanity now capable of doing good. 11  Cf., however, my Perspectives, especially 408–439. 12 Like Laato, Mikael Winninge (Sinners and the Righteous) sees a fundamental difference between Paul’s understanding of human sinfulness and the views of other Jews (e. g., “Paul simply claims that there are no righteous persons whatsoever, because all Jews and Gentiles are sinners from the outset. This is something entirely new within Judaism. Paul’s Jewish contemporaries could agree that sinfulness was a universal problem, but they would never concede that occasional sinful actions obliterated their covenantal status as righteous” (264); “whereas Paul’s Jewish contemporaries could admit that all human beings occasionally committed sins, they would never have thought of classifying

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case, the swiftest of surveys of the broadest possible range of literature.13 The deficiencies inherent in rapid overviews14 will be on bold display here: the social context, rhetorical purpose, and literary and textual history of the sources we look at will all be ignored; nor is there place here for subtlety or novelty in interpretation. Our limited purpose will be achieved if, by the end, some sense emerges whether the distinctions commonly proposed between Pauline anthropology and that of Judaism are warranted by the literature of the period, and if attention has been drawn to individual Jewish writings that would reward closer study on this issue.

Pauline Theses 1. God requires of all human beings (Jews and Gentiles alike) that they do what is good if they are to obtain life in the world to come; and God threatens with judgment those who do evil. Like most Jews of his day, Paul thought that there are certain things that people really ought to do (= “the good”) and other things that they really ought to avoid (= what is “evil”). Like many Jews of his day, Paul claimed that God would one day reward those who had done the good with eternal life while condemning those who had done evil. He says so explicitly in Romans 2:6–11; the thesis, moreover, is implicit throughout Paul’s letters whenever he speaks of the judgment (or “wrath”) to come and of the terror it holds for the sinful (1 Thess 1:10; 5:2–9; 1 Cor 5:13; 6:9–10, 11:32, etc.). 2. The substance of the required “good” is spelled out in the moral demands of the Mosaic law. The “righteousness of the law” is, for Paul, captured in the

the basically faithful as sinners” (306, contrasting what Paul writes in Romans 5]). Yet here the only non-Pauline text studied is the Psalms of Solomon. 13 Some exclusions are, however, inevitable. The extent and nature of Paul’s distinctiveness would certainly emerge more clearly if we were able to include the views of other Christian authors from the period (many of whom, of course, were also Jews); for purposes of this paper, however, our inquiry must be limited to the issue whether Jews who did not share Paul’s faith in Jesus as Messiah nonetheless shared his anthropological pessimism. Philo’s work resists quick summary here; see, however, Barclay, “Grace and Agency” (delivered at the same symposium). Alexander’s contribution to the symposium (“Predestination”) may serve to justify the brevity of my treatment of the sectarian texts from Qumran; on the other hand, their proximity to Paul’s position on the topic of this paper makes their exclusion unthinkable. Josephus is here represented solely by Against Apion. 14  After noting that a speed-reading course enabled him to read War and Peace in twenty minutes, Woody Allen paused, then added: “It’s about Russia.”



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dictum, “The one who does these things [= the demands of the law] will live by them.” Again, Romans 2 is only the most obvious source of the first part of our thesis. Those who do what is good and are rewarded with life in 2:7, 10 are clearly identified with the “doers of the law” who are found to be “righteous” before God in 2:13. In the same chapter, Paul goes on to say that Jews, who have been given the law, are thereby able to instruct Gentiles in their mutual responsibility to fulfill its (moral) commandments (2:17–23; see also v. 26). That the law spells out the good required of all human beings is also implicit in 5:13 (deeds may be [right or] wrong apart from the law, but the introduction of the law made what is wrong in any case an indictable offence), 7:15–25 (the “I” in question acknowledges the goodness of what the law requires, though admitting an inability to do it), and 13:8–10 (the law must be thought to spell out what is good, since the love that fulfills it does no “evil” to its neighbor). As we have seen, the claim in Romans 2:13 that (not the hearers, but) the doers of the law will be found righteous before God merely restates the declaration in 2:7, 10 that God will give life to those who do what is good. The same conviction is said to be the operative principle of the “righteousness of the law” in Romans 10:5 (quoting Lev 18:5): “the one who does these things [i. e., the requirements of the law] will live by them” (cf. Gal 3:12). Pursuit of the “righteousness of the law” is attributed specifically, and naturally, to Jews, to whom the law was given (Rom 9:31); the pre-Damascus Paul was among them (Phil 3:6). But the righteousness spelled out in God’s law and required of those to whom it was given is not in principle different from the “good” required of Jews and Gentiles alike (Rom 2:7, 10). 3. That Gentiles do not possess the written code of the law does not excuse them from the requirement to do what is good. The general claim that Jew and Gentile (literally, “Greek”) alike are required to do the “good” (Rom 2:10) might seem to be restated in a way that applies only to the former when Paul goes on to say that “the doers of the law will be found righteous” (2:13). Paul moves immediately to correct that impression: Gentiles can rightly be expected to meet the same demands that Jews encounter in the law since an awareness of those demands has been implanted in their hearts (2:14–15). That Gentiles are indeed aware of the good that they ought to do is demonstrated whenever they in fact do it (2:14; cf. 1:32). Such is the point of Romans 2:14–15. The verses are sometimes taken as an assertion by Paul that there are righteous Gentiles who (consistently) do what the law requires; the question is then asked whether Christian or nonChristian Gentiles are in mind. Those who think the latter are intended may

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then proceed to accuse Paul of incoherence.15 The whole train of thought appears misguided, however, once we recognize that Paul in these verses neither asserts nor assumes that Gentiles can be found who consistently do what the law requires. His point is that Gentiles and Jews are subject to the same standards of righteousness, though Jews but not Gentiles possess the law in written form. He makes his point by saying that Gentiles, too, are aware of the law’s requirements, though in a less obvious way than that applicable to Jews: the “work of the law is written on their hearts.” He substantiates this claim by saying that Gentiles show their awareness of the good they are to do whenever they do it. Such a statement is not tantamount to saying that there are Gentiles who consistently observe the law, nor does Paul’s argument require the stronger claim; indeed, that Paul is not thinking of people who consistently observe the law is made unmistakably clear when he says of the same people who show their awareness of the law’s requirements whenever they keep them (2:14) that their consciences and thoughts “accuse or even excuse” their behavior (2:15, implying that the accusations rather than the excusing are to be expected). 4. That Jews have been granted great privileges by God does not exempt them from the requirement to do what is good. Paul is as convinced as any Jew of the privileges God has granted to Israel (Rom 3:1–2; 9:4–5; 11:1). But (like many other Jews before and after him) he insisted that such privileges do not exempt Abraham’s descendants from the requirement to do what is good – or from liability to judgment should they fail to do so. One must be a “doer,” not a mere “hearer,” of the law (2:13). Teaching others what the law requires is no substitute for obeying it oneself (2:17–24). Paul underlines the point by declaring, in 2:25–29, that circumcision, though itself a benefit, means nothing if it is not accompanied by obedience to the law’s (moral) demands; and, ultimately, it is only such obedience that matters. To reinforce the point, Paul lists three of the four relevant possibilities: a circumcised person who keeps the law (his circumcision is of benefit); a circumcised person who is a transgressor of the law (his circumcision is of no benefit); an uncircumcised person who keeps the law (his physical uncircumcision will be treated as the circumcision that benefits). Each of the three scenarios underlines Paul’s point that what is decisive is obedience to the law’s moral demands (i. e., doing what is “good”), not physical cir15  Incoherence, in view of the depiction of universal guilt in Romans 1 and 3; so, most emphatically, Heikki Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 101–109. Sanders, too, sees Paul as inconsistent here, and believes that the inconsistency shows that (certain polemical passages notwithstanding) universal sinfulness was not central to Paul’s thinking. See n. 8 above.



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cumcision. (The fourth possibility, an uncircumcised person who does not keep the law, adds nothing to the case and is omitted.) Again, in the context of this paper, it is important to note what Paul does not say in 2:25–29. The third of the scenarios he lists has often been detached from its context – a series of conditional sentences – and taken as a Pauline assertion (again, contradictory of what Paul says elsewhere) that there are uncircumcised Gentiles who nonetheless keep the law. But verses 26 and 27 no more assert that there are uncircumcised people who keep the law than verse 25 asserts that some Jews observe the law while others do not. What is stated and reinforced throughout these verses is the fundamental principle (a principle hardly peculiar to Paul) that (circumcised) Jews must themselves do what is right if they are to be approved by God; obedience is what ultimately matters. 5. Neither Jews nor Gentiles have done what they ought; hence, none can be found “righteous” before God by doing what the law requires. The point is made explicitly in Romans 3:9–20, 23; and Romans 1:18–32 pronounces divine judgment on humankind (in general) for its “ungodliness and unrighteousness.” And, again, it must be insisted that the point is implicit throughout all Paul’s letters,16 representing the (negative) foundation of his mission: apart from the deliverance God has provided through his Son, humanity is doomed to a perdition warranted by its sins (1 Thess 1:9–10; 1 Cor 1:18; 2 Cor 2:15–16, etc.). “There is none righteous” (Rom 3:10). 6. Indeed, humankind (= the “ flesh”) does not, and cannot, submit to God’s law. Such is the thrust of Romans 5:12–8:8. Through Adam’s disobedience, all human beings have been made “sinners” (5:19). They now “live in sin” (6:1– 11). They are sin’s “slaves” (6:16–23). Nothing good lives in the “flesh”; it cannot do the good it acknowledges in the law (7:15–25). The mindset of the flesh is one of hostility toward God; it neither does nor can submit to God’s law. Those in the flesh cannot please God (8:7–8). The depiction of human beings as universally guilty of concrete sins in Romans 1–3 has at times been contrasted with the portrayal of their 16  Phil 3:6 has been thought to show that Paul did think righteous living a possibility. But the claim in this verse that his own (pre-Damascus) behavior was “blameless” can only represent a pre-Damascus perspective: in terms of a “righteousness” that he now disowns, Paul’s behavior was perceived as unimpeachable; but from his present perspective, Paul can hardly have regarded either “confidence in the flesh” (3:3–4) or the persecution of the church (3:6) as “blameless.” Paul’s point in the context is simply that the Philippians need not heed the claims of those who insist that the righteousness of the law requires circumcision since Paul himself surpassed them all in the practice of such righteousness – and he has now abandoned it for something far better.

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dilemma in Romans 5–7 as “slaves” of sin. Only Romans 5–7 is thought to portray human beings as incapable of doing good, though it is allowed that Romans 1–3 says that all in fact do what is evil. But perhaps the distinction has been overdrawn. After all, Romans 1–3 speaks of the concrete sins that humans commit as illustrative of the “ungodliness and unrighteousness” that prevail among human beings (1:18).17 Human sin has led to a situation in which humans are incorrigibly sinful: their thoughts have been reduced to futility, their uncomprehending heart has been darkened, they have become foolish, they have been left the hopeless prey of their passions (1:21–24). That human beings universally commit sin is thus a reflection of the universal corruption of human nature: all are “under sin” (3:9). Romans 1 and 3 seem hardly more optimistic than Romans 5–7 about the human potential for good. And once Romans 2 is correctly construed as insisting that the same requirement to do what is good applies to Gentiles (though they do not have the law) and Jews (possession of the law and of circumcision does not exempt them from the need for obedience) alike, it will not be thought contradictory of what Paul says elsewhere in Romans. 7. Because the sinfulness of Adamic humanity embraces Jews as well as Gentiles, the Sinaitic covenant is in fact a covenant of “condemnation” and “death.” Religious Jews of Paul’s day commonly saw God’s covenant with Israel – embracing both God’s promises to Abraham and Israel’s commitment at Mount Sinai to observe God’s laws – as the framework within which life was to be lived and God’s favor enjoyed. For Paul, God’s promises to Abraham remain in place – indeed, they find fulfillment now in the community of Christ-believing Jews and Gentiles (Gal 3:7–8, 14, 29; Rom 4:13– 16) and will find fulfillment at the eschaton in the salvation of “all Israel” (Rom 11:25–32). But the Sinaitic covenant, which promises life to those who observe its commandments (Rom 7:10; 10:5; Gal 3:12) while cursing its transgressors (Gal 3:10, 13; cf. 4:5), has become a covenant of enslavement (Gal 4:24), condemnation, and death (2 Cor 3:7, 9): its only operative sanction is its curse (Gal 3:10) – inevitably, inasmuch as all are “under sin” (Gal 3:22). The salvific institutions of Israel do not, for Paul, bring salvation to sinners18 (or “life” to the “dead”; cf. Gal 3:21); and since the “whole world” (including, explicitly, those “under the law”) stands “guilty before 17  Gathercole notes that humanity in Romans 1 is guilty of the “meta-sin” of “suppressing” the truth or “exchanging” it (“for worthless idols”); the “meta-sin of suppression or exchange then issues in a cascade of sins plural” (“Agencies,” 160). 18  Most Jews would agree, if by “sinners” we mean incorrigible (unrepentant) sinners. Paul, who thought humankind in bondage to sin and unwilling to submit to God’s law, would (in effect) place all human beings in that category (cf. Rom 5:8, 19). Cf. Winninge, Sinners and the Righteous, 182.



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God,” no “flesh” can be found righteous by “the works of the law” (Rom 3:19–20). “Judaism,” for Paul, means the pursuit of the “righteousness of the law,” and Paul was himself once its zealous advocate (Gal 1:13–14; Phil 3:2–9; Rom 9:31–10:5); now, however, he speaks of his life in “Judaism” as a matter of the past (Gal 1:13), of his pursuit of righteousness through the law as an abandoned quest (Phil 3:7–9). Justification of the “ungodly” requires new and extraordinary measures. 8. The “righteousness of faith” is the emergency measure that God has introduced for the “salvation” of sinful human beings. “Sinners” (who, by definition, have not done what God requires of them) can only receive righteousness, in faith, as a gift of divine grace. Because human beings do not, and cannot, show the righteous behavior that God requires of all (Jews and Gentiles alike), God has intervened to provide a means by which “sinners” (Jews and Gentiles alike) can be found “righteous.” Paul could hardly signal more clearly than he does the extraordinary and paradoxical nature of the “righteousness” that God now offers the unrighteous. Those “declared righteous by [God’s] grace as a gift” in Romans 3:24 are precisely those who have “sinned” and “fall[en] short of the glory of God” in 3:23. Those declared righteous in 4:5 are the “ungodly”; similarly, those declared righteous in 5:9 are the “ungodly” of verse 6, the “sinners” of verse 8, the “enemies” of God of verse 10. The “many” who are “made righteous” by Christ’s obedience in 5:19 are the same “many” who were “made sinners” by Adam’s disobedience. They are the recipients of an “abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness” (5:17). The gracious offer of righteousness to those who have faith is the substance of the message now being proclaimed in the gospel Paul preaches (1:16–17); inasmuch as the gospel brings “salvation” (1:16), it represents the divine response to the crisis brought on by human sin (1:18–3:20). If “sinners” are to be found “righteous,” it can only be the result of a “free gift” (Rom 5:17; cf. 3:23–24). If the “ungodly” are to be declared “righteous,” it must be “without” the (righteous) works on which such a declaration would normally be based (4:5).19 The “righteousness” of those whose sins are forgiven is one with which they have been credited “apart from [righteous] works” (4:6). The righteousness of faith necessarily operates apart from any consideration of the deeds of its recipients, inasmuch as they – the ungodly, sinners, those needing forgiveness – have no righteous 19  Moreover, as J. Louis Martyn repeatedly reminded us in symposium discussions, the message of the cross must itself create the possibility of faith in its listeners, and make of them new moral agents.

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deeds to offer. Paul’s emphasis on the gratuity of salvation in Christ mirrors his depiction of human bondage to sin.20 9. Unredeemed humanity is also in bondage to demonic forces. To this point, the only explanation we have seen Paul give of humanity’s incapacity to do good is the corruption of human nature – a corruption for which human sin is itself responsible. There is, however, another dimension to the human dilemma. According to Galatians 4:8–9, should Galatian believers become circumcised, they would thereby revert to the service of “those who by nature are not gods,” the “weak and beggarly elements” to which (to whom?) they were once enslaved. Here redemption in Christ appears to entail deliverance from the rule of demonic forces. Indeed, for William Wrede, such redemption was at the heart of the Pauline gospel (cf. also 2 Cor 4:4).21 Wrede’s claim at least seems doubtful. If 1 Thessalonians reflects the message of salvation that Paul proclaimed to the Macedonian community, nothing was said of slavery to powers of evil. God’s wrath was the danger to be avoided (1:10; 2:16; 4:6; 5:2–3, 9). The same is true, to judge by Paul’s letters, of his message to the Corinthians and Philippians (see, e. g., 1 Cor 5:13; 11:32; Phil 1:28). Galatians, too, sees in the gospel God’s mode of declaring sinners righteous (2:15–17, 21; 3:6–9, 22) and redeeming those who have transgressed the law from its curse (3:10, 13; 4:5). Romans 5–7 has often been interpreted as speaking, not simply of the incorrigible sinfulness of humankind, but of human slavery to the demonic power of “Sin.” Certainly, Paul speaks here of sin entering and ruling the world, and of people as sin’s “slaves.” Yet each reference that might tempt one to think of “Sin” as a demonic force is surrounded by others that militate against the notion. That sin “entered the world” through Adam’s misdeed might conceivably be a reference to the gaining by a demonic force of a foothold in human affairs (5:12). But Paul goes on immediately to say that sin is not “counted” (i. e., it is not indictable) apart from law: the reference must be to human misdeeds. The “sin” that “rules” through death in 5:21 is counterbalanced by “grace” that rules in righteousness – and since the rule of grace involves personification, there is no reason to think differently of that of sin.22 People may be slaves of sin in Romans 6, but the same slavery is spoken of as a slavery to “uncleanness” and “lawlessness,” and it is opposed to slavery to “obedience” and “righteousness” (6:16–23): personifications 20  The theme of grace in Paul is explored more fully, and illuminated by a comparison with Philo, in Barclay, “Grace and Agency.” 21 Wrede, Paul. 22  Note, too, that the “sin” that, in the immediately preceding verse, is said to have “increased” is parallel to the “trespass” that “multiplied” (5:20–21).



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of patterns of life, not supernatural forces, are in view. In short, though Paul undoubtedly believed in demonic forces and thought unredeemed humanity is in some sense subject to their power, he does not typically attribute human sinfulness to, or portray redemption as deliverance from, the power of demons.23 10. Paul’s anthropological pessimism seems a consequence of his Christian conviction that “Christ died for our sins.”24 It is not to be attributed to the type of Judaism in which he was raised. As we have seen, the post-Damascus Paul thought the salvific institutions of Judaism inadequate to cope with the problem of human sin; but – to judge by Paul’s letters themselves – the analysis (and with it, Paul’s anthropological pessimism) seems clearly a product of post-Damascus thinking.25 His references to his former progress “in Judaism” and zeal for its traditions (Gal 1:14; Phil 3:4–6) make it unlikely that, before Damascus, he had harbored deep-seated doubts about its viability. Things looked very different, however, once Paul was convinced that the crucifixion and resurrection of God’s Son were necessary for the salvation of humankind: here was a divine initiative quite outside the framework of the Sinaitic covenant; as such, it called both for a reconsideration of the divine purpose of that covenant26 and for a more radical assessment of the human dilemma.27 It follows that, whatever analogies to Paul’s anthropological pessimism we may find in non-Christian Jewish texts, it would be wrong to seek in Paul’s own pre-Christian experience of Judaism the source of his pessimism.

23 

For more detail, see my Perspectives, 352–407. I am of course agreeing with Sanders’s thesis that, for Paul, the solution preceded the plight. (As J. Louis Martyn pointedly reminded us at the symposium, this was Barth’s position as well!) 25 That Paul’s post-Damascus thinking (including its anthropological pessimism) reflects his (re)reading of Israel’s scriptures is the important emphasis of Watson’s Hermeneutics: “Christ and scripture reciprocally interpret one another. … For Paul, the light of the risen Christ is at the same time the illumination of scripture, a scripture reordered so as to form the interpretative matrix within which the Christ-event takes shape and discloses itself as the particular event it is” (529; cf. also 190–191, 310). 26  Since Paul continued to believe that the Sinaitic covenant and law were divinely instituted (and therefore “glorious” [2 Cor 3:7–11]), they could only be deemed “inadequate” if called upon to perform a task they were not intended to fulfill. The purpose of the law itself needed to be rethought in light of God’s redemption in Christ. Paul’s reflections on the subject lie outside the scope of this paper, however. 27  With that in mind, the phrase “Pauline pessimism” must itself be seen as misleading. Paul does not appear to have entertained negative views of human moral capacities apart from the buoyant, more-than-offsetting conviction that God, in Jesus Christ, had intervened graciously and dramatically to provide for human salvation. 24 Here

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Several scholars of an earlier day28 suggested that it derived from the Hellenistic Judaism in which Paul was raised, which had (apparently) deteriorated considerably from the purer strands of Palestine. It seems doubtful that Hellenistic Judaism can be so distinguished from Palestinian;29 if, moreover, Philippians 3:6 represents Paul’s pre-Damascus assessment of his behavior, then he must have once thought that some Jews at least (among whom he did not hesitate to include himself) had done quite well in measuring up to the law’s requirements. The same evidence for pre-Damascus optimism would seem to rule out the suggestion that the pre-Damascus Paul shared with apocalyptic Judaism a sense that human beings are the hopeless victims of superhuman powers of evil; nor do such powers figure sufficiently in Paul’s post-Damascus depictions of human sinfulness30 and redemption31 to suggest that his thinking was grounded and remained within the horizons of (such)32 apocalyptic circles. In short, though a comparison of Paul’s pes-

28 

E. g., Montefiore, Judaism and St. Paul; Sandmel, Genius. Here the obligatory reference is, of course, to Hengel’s Judaism and Hellenism. 30  Though human beings are said to be incorrigibly sinful in both Romans 1–3 and Romans 5–7, in neither passage is human sinfulness attributed to the influence of superhuman forces; still less are humans the innocent victims of such forces. In Romans 1, human sinfulness is rooted in the (inexcusable; see 1:20; also v. 32) refusal of humans who “knew God” to “honor him as God” or “give thanks to him” (1:21); moreover, as Gathercole notes, the dominating power into whose hands God places sinful human beings is here their own desires (“Agencies,” 166). Romans 5 is explicit in claiming that “sin came into the world through one man” (5:12; on what I take to be the personification of “sin” in the verse, see the discussion in point 9 above; but even if we take the verse to be speaking of Sin as a superhuman power, its “entrance” into the world of human beings is said to be dependent on a concrete act of human disobedience) and that it was “by one man’s disobedience” that “the many were made sinners” (5:19). Yet humans so corrupted are incapable of pleasing God (8:7–8). Conspicuously absent from Paul’s writings are (what some would call) “Enochic” notions of human sinfulness as the result of the intermarriage of angelic and human beings (thus transgressing creation’s boundaries) or of the revelation of mysteries to human beings by (fallen) angels. 31  See the discussion in point 9 above. 32  “Apocalyptic” is, of course, a slippery term; many themes so designated in the scholarly literature are abundantly attested in Paul’s writings. What is denied here is simply that Paul’s pessimistic anthropology has its roots in a branch of Judaism that is thought to portray human beings as the hopeless victims of superhuman powers of evil. Note that such an understanding of the human dilemma makes very problematic the covenantal theology that assigns blessings to those who obey God’s law (cf. Boccaccini, Middle Judaism, 133). The pre-Damascus Paul, on the other hand, seems to have been committed to just such a theology: he was “zealous” in keeping the “traditions” of his ancestors, and deemed himself “blameless” in his pursuit of the “righteousness that is based on law” (Gal 1:14; Phil 3:6). Similarly, the Jews of whom he speaks were committed to the “righteousness that is based on the law” (Rom 9:31; 10:3–5). To use Boccaccdini’s terms, “Judaism” as Paul knew it was clearly “proto-rabbinic,” not “Enochic.” See also n. 49 below. 29 



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simism with the anthropology found within the many branches of Judaism at the turn of the era should prove illuminating, no direct route from the latter to the former is presupposed.

Human Moral Capacities in Jewish Writings Paul thought that human beings – in Adam, or in the “flesh” – are incapable of showing the righteousness that God requires of them; hence, righteousness must be given them as a gift. We turn now to Jewish literature of the period between (roughly) 200 BCE and 200 CE. Much of Judaism of the period can properly be described as Torah-centric. The question we put to these sources can thus usually be stated in terms of Torah’s fulfillment: Is Israel’s observance of Torah thought, in principle, to be unproblematic, or are reasons suggested why the observance of God’s commands is difficult (or even impossible) for some, or most, or even all Jews? Occasionally, where the identification of righteous or wise behavior with conduct conforming to the Mosaic law is not explicit, we must be content with what the text says about the human potential for virtue in general. Since the possibility of Gentile righteousness is seldom a focus in these texts, comments on that subject will be few.33 Since the purpose of this survey is heuristic rather than genealogical,34 I make no attempt to arrange texts in chronological order, nor do I comment on issues of dating where they are in dispute. Given that the survey is exploratory in nature, it is important that results not be prejudiced by what we may expect to find in literature of a certain sort (e. g., “wisdom literature,” or “apocalyptic”) or by the assumption that texts related in other respects will treat our topic similarly. Hence, our inquiry – whether humans are deemed capable of doing good; whether righteous people are to be found – will be put afresh to each text, and the order in which texts are taken up for discussion will be deliberately arbitrary.35

33  It will quickly become apparent that in many texts the possibility of doing good (by Jews, at least) seems self-evident. At the risk of repetition, I have included a number of such texts: to pass them over and highlight possible exceptions to the rule would inevitably distort the picture. 34  See n. 9 above. 35 Rabbinic literature (here represented by Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael) will be treated first, followed by Josephus (Against Apion), the books of the (Old Testament) “Apocrypha” (in the order in which they appear in the NRSV) and Pseudepigrapha (in the order in which they appear in Charlesworth’s edition), and the sectarian literature from Qumran.

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1. That humans have the choice to do good or evil is stressed in at least three different contexts in Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael.36 Adam, faced with the need to choose between “the way of life and the way of death,” opted for the latter (Beshallah 7 [Lauterbach 1.248], on Exod 14:20); all nations had the opportunity at Sinai to accept or reject the Torah, though only Israel chose to accept it (Bahodesh 1 [Lauterbach 2.198–200], on 19:2; Bahodesh 5–6 [Lauterbach 2.234–238], on 20:2–3); the same choice must be made by the individual as well.37 If one wishes to hearken, he is immediately given the opportunity to hearken. If one wishes to forget, he is immediately led to forget. And [Simon b. Azzai] also used to say: Once a man desires to hearken of his own will, he is led to hearken both when it is his will to do so and even when it is not his will. And if it be his will to forget, he will be led to forget even when it is not his will. Freedom of choice is given. (Vayassa‘ 1 [Lauterbach 2.97], on 15:26)

Frequent statements throughout Mekilta mention particular rewards given by God in response to particular deeds (“for one cannot obtain rewards except for deeds” [Pisha 5 (Lauterbach 1.34), on 12:6; so Pisha 11 (Lauterbach 1.87), on 12:23; Pisha 16 (Lauterbach 1.140–141), on 13:4, etc.]). It should not be concluded that divine judgment was thought to proceed on a strict measure-for-measure basis; but it certainly does follow that people were thought capable of acting in God-pleasing ways.38 2. Much of Josephus’s Against Apion is devoted to praise of the laws of Moses, the divinely guided lawgiver of the Jews (2.184). But good laws that are beyond the capacity of their subjects to fulfill are of little use (cf. 2.220–224), so Josephus emphasizes as well the importance Jews place on observing their laws (1.42, 60, 190–192), the willingness of all to do so, and their unparalleled success – throughout their history – in maintaining obedience (2.82, 150, 156, 228): “a transgressor is a rarity” (2.178).39 For our limited purpose, we need draw no further conclusions from these extraordinary statements than that Josephus evinces no suspicion that humans are unable to obey God’s law. 36 Quotations from this text are taken from the three-volume edition edited and translated by Lauterbach. 37  Boccaccini (“Debate,” 24) notes that the rabbis did not share “Enochic” ideas of the superhuman nature of evil. 38  Note as well Alexander’s treatment of the rabbinic doctrine of the two inclinations and of its implicit acknowledgement of human freedom of choice (“Predestination”) and Avemarie’s discussion of the evil inclination and human capacities to resist it (“Tension”). 39  Cf. the even more extravagant claim in Ant. 3.223: “Those laws, excellent beyond the standard of human wisdom, have been in every age rigidly observed, insomuch that neither in peace, through luxury, nor in war, under constraint, have Hebrews transgressed any of them.” (Translations from Josephus are taken from the Loeb edition, by H. St. J. Thackeray.)



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3. Though Tobit’s40 kindred and tribe had proved faithless from the time of Jeroboam (Tob 1:4–5), and though, even in exile, they ate the food of the Gentiles (1:10), Tobit himself “walked in the ways of truth and righteousness all the days of [his] life” (1:3) – and he was not alone (5:14; 9:6; cf. 3:14). The text distinguishes between such “righteous” (though not sinless; cf. 3:3) people and “sinners” (4:17; 13:6, 9): both encounter, in this life,41 fates suited to their deeds (4:5–19; 12:6–10). The exhortations that our author seizes every opportunity to convey assume throughout that it is possible to do what is right, to avoid sin, and to please God by so doing: Revere the Lord all your days, my son, and refuse to sin or to transgress his commandments. Live uprightly all the days of your life, and do not walk in the ways of wrongdoing; for those who act in accordance with truth will prosper in all their activities. (4:5–6) Do good and evil will not overtake you. (12:7) So now, my children, I command you, serve God faithfully and do what is pleasing in his sight. (14:8)

Even Gentiles, though now lacking in understanding and deceived by their idols, will one day “all be converted and worship God in truth” (14:6; cf. 4:19; 13:11). Israelites who are alive in that day (as in Tobit’s own day) will meet different fates, depending on their actions: All the Israelites who are saved in those days and are truly mindful of God will be gathered together; they will go to Jerusalem and live in safety forever in the land of Abraham, and it will be given over to them. Those who sincerely love God will rejoice, but those who commit sin and injustice will vanish from all the earth. (14:7)

Nothing in Tobit suggests that obedience that satisfies God is beyond human achieving. 4. In Judith, the God of Israel is “the God who hates iniquity” (Jdt 5:17). When Israel sins, it can anticipate disaster; but no harm can befall the people when they have not sinned against their God (5:17–21; 11:10). The latter is held out as a real possibility (cf. 5:19, 21; 8:20). Judith herself is seen as a virtuous woman (8:8, 31; 13:20), and even the Ammonite Achior does what is right in coming to faith in Israel’s God (14:10). 5. In the Wisdom of Solomon, the doing of good or evil is ostensibly at the discretion of all human beings. The book opens with an invitation to the “rulers of the earth” (and thus to Gentiles) to “love righteousness” and 40  In what follows, quotations from the Apocryphal/Deuteroncanonical books are taken from the NRSV. 41  Resurrection is not envisaged in Tobit. Tobit is content if some of his descendants survive to see the day of Jerusalem’s glory (13:16).

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to seek the Lord “because he is found by those who do not put him to the test” (1:1–2). Later, “monarchs” are addressed in order that they “may learn wisdom and not transgress” (6:9). Wisdom is found by those who seek her (6:12); “therefore if you delight in thrones and scepters, O monarchs over the peoples, honor wisdom, so that you may reign forever” (6:21). Solomon himself, though born no different from other human beings (7:1–6), recognized that, apart from wisdom, humans are weak and lacking in understanding (9:5); only if guided by wisdom can they learn what pleases God and do deeds that God finds acceptable (9:10–12). Furthermore, he had the insight to realize that only God can give wisdom; in answer to his prayers, then, he was given wisdom and “all good things … along with her” (7:7–11; 8:21–9:18). Similarly, the righteous of every age have been steered by wisdom (9:17–18; 10:1, 4–6, 10, etc.). The righteous nation of Israel (10:15; 15:2–4) – whose history has never been more benignly told; not even the wilderness generation departed from wisdom (10:15–11:14)! – has repeatedly experienced the guidance and deliverance of divine wisdom. The path of wisdom, though accessible to all who seek her, has not been pursued by all, however; and though God loves all his creatures and provides even the most incorrigible sinners with every opportunity to repent (11:23–24; 12:2–27), in the end, all will be judged for their deeds (1:8; 3:10; 5:15, etc.). Immortality will be the lot of the righteous, even if their earthly life should end prematurely (3:1–9; 4:7–9, 16; 5:15); on the other hand, “those who have not heeded the warning of mild rebukes will experience the deserved judgment of God” (12:26). Does the Wisdom of Solomon contain any hints that there are circumstances beyond the control of the ungodly that keep them from doing what is right? According to 2:23–24, it was through the “devil’s envy” that death entered the world. Genesis 3 is presumably in mind; but the reference hardly suffices to acquit Adam and Eve of guilt for their actions, and the devil is not mentioned as a factor in later sins. Idolatry is portrayed as the source of all evil (14:12, 27), and various suggestions are made about its origins, some, seemingly, with little guilt attached (13:6–7; 14:15–21); but in the end, our author refuses to see idolaters as blameless (11:15; 13:8–9; 14:30–31).42 At one point, however, our author does suggest that the Canaanites whom the Israelites displaced were so innately sinful that any change of their ways was inconceivable: But judging them little by little you gave them an opportunity to repent, though you were not unaware that their origin was evil and their wickedness inborn, and that their way of thinking would never change. For they were an accursed race from the beginning. (12:10–11) 42 

Cf. Barclay, Diaspora, 186–187.



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Here the curse placed upon Canaan in Genesis 9:25 is perhaps thought to have predetermined the moral character of his descendants (cf. 3:12–13). Even in that case, however, they would still be suffering for the concrete sin of their ancestor; and the context as a whole is intended to stress that God is so indulgent to sinners that their postponed punishment is richly deserved. 6. At no point in the literature is the human capacity to do good more explicitly affirmed than in Sirach 15: Do not say, “It was the Lord’s doing that I fell away”; for he does not do what he hates. Do not say, “It was he who led me astray”; for he has no need of the sinful. … It was [the Lord] who created humankind in the beginning, and he left them in the power of their own free choice. If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose. Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given. … He has not commanded anyone to be wicked, and he has not given anyone permission to sin. (15:11–20)43

Consistent with this perspective are any number of texts that treat the doing of what is good and right as a matter of course – or at least of one or two easy steps – for all who are so inclined: If you are willing, my child, you can be disciplined, and if you apply yourself you will become clever. If you love to listen you will gain knowledge, and if you pay attention you will become wise. (6:32–33) Do no evil, and evil will never overtake you. Stay away from wrong, and it will turn away from you. (7:1–2) In all you do, remember the end of your life, and then you will never sin. (7:36)

God, of course, judges people by their deeds (16:12–14; 35:24). Those who do what is right please the Lord and may anticipate his blessing (2:8; 11:22; 35:5).44 43 The text alludes to Deut 30:19, “‘life’ and ‘death’ represent the two opposing human destinies. … There are two respective ways to those two destinies, keeping the commandments or transgressing them; and the way that we take is a matter of our own choice, not of fate” (Watson, Hermeneutics, 11–12). 44 Indeed, Boccaccini (Middle Judaism, 105) sees in Sir 21:27 (which he renders: “When an impious man curses the satan, he really curses his own soul”) a radical demythologization of satan, “the angelic being depicted in the Book of the Watchers as guilty of the corruption of the world and therefore responsible for evil.” The NRSV rendering of the verse, however, takes it to refer to a human adversary (i. e., the curse one utters

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Still, this straightforward picture is not the whole story, even in Sirach. Even the righteous – Sirach allows – commit sins, at times without knowing it (19:16); indeed, “we all deserve punishment” (8:5) and need forgiveness (28:2, 4). All face temptation, and prayers that one will not be overcome by evil are very much in order (23:4–6; cf. 37:15). A review of history shows that the righteous have often been a distinct minority (44:17; 48:15; 49:4). One can even regret that human beings were created with an inclination to evil (37:3). And though our author insists that humans are free to choose good or evil, his conviction that God is the creator of all leads him elsewhere to say that good and evil, life and death, sinners and the godly are all among the “pairs” created by God (33:10–15; cf. 42:24).45 Nonetheless, for Ben Sira himself, none of these considerations seems to have called into question the human capacity for doing good.46 7. Baruch echoes the Jewish scriptures in lamenting Israel’s inveterate disobedience: From the time when the Lord brought our ancestors out of the land of Egypt until today, we have been disobedient to the Lord our God, and we have been negligent, in not heeding his voice. … We did not listen to the voice of the Lord our God in all the words of the prophets whom he sent to us, but all of us followed the intent of our own wicked hearts by serving other gods and doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord our God. (Bar 1:19–22)

Scripture is echoed as well in the assurance that God will one day give his people “a heart that obeys and ears that hear,” so that they will “turn from their stubbornness and their wicked deeds” (2:31–32; cf. 3:7). But neither Israel’s habitual disobedience nor the conviction that the propensity for sin will one day be overcome by divine intervention means that, today, obedience is beyond human attainment. [The way to knowledge] is the book of the commandments of God, the law that endures forever. All who hold her fast will live, and those who forsake her will die. (4:1)

against an adversary recoils on oneself); so also Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 311–312. 45  Winston (Wisdom of Solomon, 46–58) discusses the juxtaposition of “freedom and determinism” in Sirach and other Jewish texts, remarking, “What baffles the reader of this ancient literature, however, is the easy coexistence in it of two apparently contradictory strands of thought, namely, an emphasis on God’s ultimate determination of all human action coupled with an equally emphatic conviction that the human will is the arbiter of its own moral destiny” (48). See also Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 257–270, 446–447. 46 Cf. Skehan and Di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 82–83; also Gowan, “Wisdom,” 216–217.



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8. The books of Maccabees are dominated by stories of how loyalty to God and to his laws cost many people their lives; but clearly such faithfulness – and righteous behavior in general – is thought within human capacities. Indeed, the author of 4 Maccabees never tires of repeating the thesis that reason is able to subdue the passions (at least, when it is instructed by God’s law; cf. 1:1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc.).47 9. In the one extensive passage in 1 Esdras lacking a parallel in the canonical Jewish scriptures, Zerubbabel debates with two other bodyguards of King Darius the topic “What one thing is strongest?” In claiming that truth is the strongest of all, he notes: All God’s works quake and tremble, and with him there is nothing unrighteous. Wine is unrighteous, the king is unrighteous, women are unrighteous, all human beings are unrighteous, all their works are unrighteous, and all such things. There is no truth in them and in their unrighteousness they will perish. But truth endures and is strong forever, and lives and prevails forever and ever. (4:36–38)

The passage is reminiscent of the insistence found several times in Job that in God’s eyes no human being can really be righteous: after all, if even “his angels he charges with error,” if even “the heavens are not clean in his sight,” if even “the moon is not bright, and the stars are not pure in his sight,” then none born of women can possibly be deemed righteous (Job 4:17–19; 15:14– 16; 25:4–6, NRSV; cf. also Ps 143:2). The infinite gap between God and all his creation is thereby underlined – without it following that distinctions cannot still be drawn between what is ordinarily meant by “righteous” people and “sinners.” Certainly, 1 Esdras follows the biblical narrative elsewhere in recognizing, for example, the uprightness of Josiah (1:23). 10. The Prayer of Manasseh is explicit in distinguishing between the “righteous” (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are mentioned) “who did not sin against [God]” and “sinners” (such as Manasseh) for whom repentance has been appointed “so that they may be saved” (7–8). Clearly, there is no sense here that righteous, God-pleasing behavior is beyond human capacities to attain – though, for notorious sinners, repentance is available as plan B. 11. 1 Enoch48 is perhaps best known49 for attributing the origin of evil on earth to angelic beings who, in deliberate rebellion against God, violated 47  See also Watson, “Antithesis,” where it is noted that the author of 4 Maccabees believes that “in no circumstances, however extreme, is transgression of the law unavoidable or justifiable” (109). 48  Quotations from the pseudepigraphical writings are taken from the two-volume edition (The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha) edited by Charlesworth. 49  1 Enoch has also figured largely in recent discussions of “covenantal nomism.” Sanders, conceding that important concepts are at best implicit in the text, believes that it nonetheless falls under this umbrella category (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 342–362,

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nature’s order by having intercourse with women, thereby producing giants; and who, moreover, disclosed to human beings things that ought not to be revealed, thus leading them into sin (6:1–8:3). The origin of sin and the necessity of divine judgment (beginning with the punishment of the angels and the sending of the flood) are thus accounted for – without it being said that all human beings were made “sinners” (in the radical sense of the word) or that they are now incapable of doing good. On the contrary, distinctions between the “righteous” and the “wicked” are maintained throughout the various sections of 1 Enoch.50 The wicked are explicitly and repeatedly condemned because they themselves have committed concrete and obvious wrongs (1:9; 5:4–5; 27:2; 38:1; 45:1–2; 46:5–8; 60:6; 63:6–9; 94:6–11; 95:5–7; 96:5–8; 97:7–10, etc.), which have been written down for the day of judgment (98:8);51 in principle, at least, they are thought capable of doing right (cf. 104:9).52 That the righteous are frequently identified with the “elect”53 might seem to eliminate notions of human responsibility; in fact, however, the righteous (or “elect”) are repeatedly summoned to “seek for [themselves] and choose righteousness and the elect life” (94:4), and promised rewards 422–424). Sanders’s approach to this text is broadly supported by Bauckham, “Apocalypses,” 140–142, 147–149; others dispute the suggestion (e. g., Collins, Imagination, 37–38, 63, 154; Between Athens and Jerusalem, 14; Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 50–56; Boccaccini, Middle Judaism, 79, 133). Without entering that dispute here, we may simply repeat that, if 1 Enoch does indeed represent a pattern of religion different from “covenantal nomism,” one in which Enochic revelations rather than Israel’s covenant and law provide the crucial basis for salvation, then the “Judaism” with which Paul is familiar, both from his own upbringing and from the controversies sparked by his mission, is closer to “covenantal nomism” than to “Enochic” strands within Judaism (see nn. 30 and 32 above). 50  Note, e. g., the reference to “all the righteous ones” in 12:17. According to 81:5, Enoch was to tell Methuselah “that no one of the flesh can be just before the Lord, for they are merely his own creation.” The notion that the gap between Creator and created is so great that no human could possibly meet God’s approval is a theme found in Job and elsewhere (see the discussion of 1 Esdras above). For 1 Enoch (here “The Book of the Heavenly Luminaries”), as elsewhere, however, this does not mean that one cannot speak of “righteous” human beings and distinguish them from sinners; the rest of chapter 81 does precisely that (the immediately preceding verse is a beatitude of the righteous, and v. 9 speaks of “those who do right”). Note, too, how 5:8 reckons with the sin of those who are nonetheless considered righteous. 51  Indeed, 98:4 appears to insist on the responsibility of human beings for their own sin (“neither has sin been exported into the world. It is the people who have themselves invented it. And those who commit it shall come under a great curse”): “the passage serves an important clarifying and corrective function within 1 Enoch as a whole. The myth of the rebel angels notwithstanding (see chs 6–11), human beings are responsible for their deeds” (Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 477; Nickelsburg goes on to suggest that this passage in 1 Enoch reflects a common tradition with Sir 15:11–17:24). 52 Remarkably, 1 Enoch even has a place for the repentance and salvation of Gentiles (10:21; 50:2–3; 90:37–38; 91:14). 53  So in the “Book of Watchers” (1–36), twice in the “Epistle of Enoch” (91–105), but frequently in the “Parables” (37–71). See Bauckham, “Apocalypses,” 142–143.



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when they do so; and they, too, must exercise care to avoid the paths of wickedness (“Do not walk in the evil way, or in the way of death! Do not draw near to them lest you be destroyed!” [94:3; cf. 91:4, 19; 94:1; 104:6]).54 In short, even though 1 Enoch sees superhuman forces at the root of human evil, it does not share Paul’s pessimistic view that “there is none righteous,” that none can “please God” (Rom 3:10; 8:8).55 12. Though 2 Enoch, like 1 Enoch, tells of the Watchers who took the daughters of men as wives, produced giants, and defiled the earth by their deeds (18:4), the capacity of human beings to do good seems, again, not to be affected. Free will is explicitly said to be given to Adam, and appears to be retained by his descendants. And I gave [Adam] his free will; and I pointed out to him the two ways – light and darkness. And I said to him, “This is good for you, but that is bad”; so that I might come to know whether he has love toward me or abhorrence, and so that it might become plain who among his race loves me. (2 En. 30:15)

Exhortations to do what is right are frequent (e. g., 2:2; 36:4), as are descriptions of the “righteous” who live as they ought (9:1; 41:2; 42:6, 70:1, etc.). 13. The tender-hearted seer of 4 Ezra repeatedly laments both the evil inclination56 found within each human being and Adam’s sin, suggesting that the waywardness of the race, and of Israel in particular, ought therefore to be excused or forgiven. The first Adam, burdened with an evil heart, transgressed and was overcome, as were also all who were descended from him. Thus the disease became permanent; the law was in the people’s heart along with the evil root, but what was good departed, and the evil remained. (4 Ezra 3:21–22; cf. 4:30) O Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the fall was not yours alone, but ours also who are your descendants. (7:48[118]; cf. 3:26; 7:[48])

His angelic interlocutor will have none of it. Human beings have none but themselves to blame for their sin.57 With the evil inclination they were also 54 “Thus election is not envisaged as contradicting human freedom to choose the good” (Bauckham, “Apocalypses,” 145). 55  Nickelsburg (1 Enoch, 46) sees in 1 Enoch a juxtaposition of two explanations of the origin and presence of sin in the world: “(1) sin and evil are the function of a primordial heavenly revolt whose results continue to victimize the human race; (2) responsibility for sin and evil lies with the human beings who transgress God’s law.” Neither cancels out the other, though different sections of the book show different emphases. 56  On the “evil heart” in 4 Ezra, see Stone, Fourth Ezra, 63–65. Stone notes that in 4 Ezra it is the evil inclination, not sinfulness itself, that has been inherited by Adam’s descendants. 57  It is worth observing that in 4 Ezra, undoubtedly among the most negative of the texts of our study in its assessment of human moral performance, “the figure of Satan

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given freedom, and it was in their power to overcome the disposition to evil and do good (cf. 7:[92]). Their sin is therefore inexcusable. God strictly commanded those who came into the world, when they came, what they should do to live, and what they should observe to avoid punishment. Nevertheless they were not obedient, and spoke against him. (7:21–22) Do not ask any more questions about the multitude of those who perish. For they also received freedom, but they despised the Most High, and were contemptuous of his Law, and forsook his ways. … For the Most High did not intend that men should be destroyed, but they themselves who were created have defiled the name of him who made them, and have been ungrateful to him who prepared life for them. (8:55–60; cf. also 7:57–61[127–131]; 9:10–12)

That some (Ezra himself among them (6:32; 7:[77]; 8:47–49) measure up to divine standards of righteousness demonstrates that it is within human capacity to do so (cf. 7:[88–89]); and if those who do are far outnumbered by sinners who do not, then the seer should reflect on how much more rare – and more valued – gold is than clay (7:[52–61]; 8:1–3). 14. Second Baruch also raises the issue of the impact of Adam’s sin on his descendants. O Adam, what did you do to all who were born after you? And what will be said of the first Eve who obeyed the serpent, so that this whole multitude is going to corruption? (2 Bar. 48:42–43; cf. 18:2; 56:5–7)

The answer, again, is that the choices that faced Adam face each of his descendants as well – and they have the same opportunity to do good or evil. Those who do not love your Law are justly perishing. And the torment of judgment will fall upon those who have not subjected themselves to your power. For, although Adam sinned first and has brought death upon all who were not in his own time, yet each of them who has been born from him has prepared for himself the coming torment. And further, each of them has chosen for himself the coming glory. For truly, the one who believes will receive reward. … Adam is, therefore, not the cause, except only for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam. (54:14–19; cf. 19:1; 48:38–40; 51:16; 55:2)

And again, the book speaks repeatedly of those who are righteous as well as of the wicked (9:1; 11:4; 14:5–7; 21:11; 24:1) – though noting that, in the end, all who are born require God’s mercy (i. e., no human being can really be righteous before God [84:11]), and stressing as well that even sinners can repent and obtain God’s grace (41:4; 42:5; 77:6–7). 15. According to the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, human beings are faced with a choice between “two ways,” that of good and that of evil plays no role” (Stone, Fourth Ezra, 64 n. 21) and human freedom and responsibility are strongly emphasized (Stone, Fourth Ezra, 257, 288).



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(T. Levi 19:1; T. Ash. 1:3–5). Dispositions to both are found within them (T. Jud. 20:1–3; T. Ash. 1:5). The evil spirits of Beliar dominate those who choose evil (T. Dan 4:7; T. Naph. 8:6; T. Ash. 1:8–9) but have no power over those who do the right. If promiscuity does not triumph over reason, then neither can Beliar conquer you. (T. Reub. 4:11) You do these [pious actions] as well, my children, and every spirit of Beliar will flee from you. (T. Iss. 7:7) Those who are silent in purity of heart will be able to hold fast God’s will and to shunt aside the will of Beliar. (T. Naph. 3:1; cf. T. Sim. 3:5; T. Iss. 4:4; T. Dan 5:1; T. Benj. 3:3–4; 6:1)58

The patriarchs repeatedly urge their sons to choose what is good, assuring them that evil can be overcome (T. Sim. 3:4), and noting that God is well pleased with those who make right choices (T. Sim. 5:2; cf. T. Iss. 4:1; T. Dan 1:3). Several of the patriarchs are prepared to testify to the purity of their own lives (T. Iss. 3:2–4; T. Zeb. 1:4–5; T. Ash. 5:4; T. Jos. 1:3) – though this may involve a good deal of explaining about their role in the sale of Joseph into slavery (T. Zeb. 1:5–4:13), and Reuben concedes that the period of his sinlessness dates from the time of his encounter with Bilhah (T. Reub. 4:4). 16. Satan makes an obligatory appearance in Testament of Job; but no more than in the canonical counterpart is Satan able to act without divine authorization (T. Job 8:2–3; 16:2; 20:2). And though Satan does succeed in leading Job’s wife astray (23:11; 26:6), Job proves more than his match – as Satan himself admits, with sobs and shame (27:2–6). Job’s own proverbial righteousness reaches unparalleled heights in the Testament when he follows up his feeding of widows by accompanying their hymn-singing on the lyre (14:2–3). 17. In Testament of Abraham,59 the patriarch’s righteousness warrants his singling out for the honor of being informed in advance – by Michael, God’s Commander-in-Chief – that he is about to leave the vain world and journey to God (T. Abr. 1:4–7). So righteous does he prove to Michael that the angel cannot bring himself to break the news to Abraham (4:6). At last, Abraham is told – and flatly refuses to accompany Michael back to God. Ultimately, he strikes a bargain, saying that he is willing to quit this life if he is first shown “all the inhabited world and all the created things which [God] established” (9:4–6). The wish is granted. But Abraham, who has himself lived without sin, has no mercy on sinners when he sees them; he invokes divine judgment 58  Note that in the Apocalypse of Abraham as well, the righteous are not deceived by Azazel, though Azazel rules over those who “desire evil” (13:7–14; 23:9–13). 59  Recension A is cited throughout.

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upon them. God has to stop the chariot on its tour since, if Abraham “were to see all those who pass their lives in sin, he would destroy everything that exists” (10:12–13). God himself is merciful, giving sinners every chance to “convert and live” (10:14). In the judgment scene that follows, the wicked are said to far outnumber the righteous (11:12). But both are to be found: there is (again) no suggestion that humans are incapable of doing good. 18. The Letter of Aristeas blithely assumes that all humankind worships the God of Israel, albeit under different names (16); it is the part of piety to acknowledge that God, the Creator of all, directs the “acts and intentions” of all human beings whenever they attend to what is right (18).60 It is a gift of God to be a doer of good works and not of the opposite. (231) Self-control … is impossible to achieve unless God disposes the heart and mind toward it. (237) You [King Ptolemy II] excel all men in your moderation and humanity – God having endowed you with these gifts. (290) You consider injustice the greatest evil, and by your just government in all things have won glory for yourself which is imperishable – God granting you to have a pure mind untainted by any evil. (292; cf. also 238, 248, 271, 272, 274, 282, etc.)

Bad company can, to be sure, lead to a person’s ruin (130). And humanity’s inclination to pleasure has led to much injustice and greed (277). “The virtuous disposition, on the other hand, restrains those who are attracted to the rule of pleasure, and commands them to respect self-control and justice more highly. God directs all these matters” (278). In short, the God who creates and governs all lies behind all that is good. That said, nothing suggests that the human beings God has made are incapable of doing good. 19. Israel’s habitual waywardness is well known to the author of Jubilees (1:7–14, 22). Nonetheless, there is no doubt that Israelites are in a position to do what is right, should they choose to do so: such a capacity is implied in the exhortations found throughout the book, and it is confirmed by the recognition of righteous people within Israel (17:17–18; 23:10; 35:3, 6, 12, etc.). Even the attacks of demons against them fail (18:9–12; 19:28; cf. 1:20; 12:20). Moreover, God has ordained the rites of the Day of Atonement to cleanse Israel of its sins (34:18–19), and repentance is open even to sinners within Israel (1:15, 23; 5:17–18; 41:25) – provided they have not committed any unforgiveable sins, about which Jubilees has a good deal to say (15:33–34; 30:14; 33:18, etc.).

60 Cf. Boccaccini, Middle Judaism, 172–174. For a similar insistence in Philo, see Barclay, “Grace and Agency.”



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Gentiles are another matter.61 That none does what is right is self-evident to our author (21:21; 22:16–18); nor is it thinkable that any will survive the day of judgment (15:26; 22:22). That our author believes them culpable for their wrongdoing is also clear (5:13–16). What is not apparent – the issue does not exercise the author of Jubilees – is whether there was ever any chance that they would do otherwise. For one thing, the laws of Torah, including those that distinguish Jews from Gentiles – Sabbath observance, circumcision, observance of Jewish festivals – are the laws by which the universe is run; even angels observe them (2:17–22; 6:17–19; 15:25–27, etc.); yet Gentiles do not, and apparently cannot – the text stresses that the Sabbath in particular was granted solely to Israel (2:31–33; cf. also 15:28–29) – and are damned for their failure (2:25; 15:26). Moreover, they are deceived by demons, who “are (intended) to corrupt and lead astray” (10:8; cf. 7:27; 8:3; 11:5–6). On the one hand, subjection to demonic forces may be portrayed as a divine judgment for human sin (“because the evil of the sons of men is great” [10:8]); yet God is also said to have delivered the Gentile nations into the power of demons in order that they might be led astray – while reserving Israel for his own rule. (There are) many nations and many people, and they all belong to (God), but over all of them he caused spirits to rule so that they might lead them astray from following him. But over Israel he did not cause any angel or spirit to rule because he alone is their ruler and he will protect them. (15:31–32; cf. 16:17–18)

20. The Ascension of Isaiah speaks of a prince of the forces of evil, variously named Sammael, Beliar, or Satan. Beliar is called “the angel of iniquity who rules this world” (2:4); Manasseh’s wickedness is linked to Beliar, who is said to dwell in Manasseh’s heart (1:9; 3:11). Though the text has many Christian interpolations, these elements of the text require no such explanation. There is no reflection on whether the influence of demonic forces can be overcome. 21. In Joseph and Asenath, Joseph is portrayed as a paragon of virtue; Levi and Benjamin, too, fear the Lord and do what is right (22:13; 23:9; 27:1). The great sin in the book is the worship of “dead and dumb idols” (11:7–8; 12:5); but even for this sin there is repentance, and people of all nations who “attach themselves to the Most High God” find refuge under the “wings” of Asenath (15:7; 19:5), who herself repented and found new life in the service of the true God (8:9; 27:10). 22. The Life of Adam and Eve (the Greek version is designated Apocalypse of Moses, the Latin Vita) shares with much Jewish literature of the period a 61  Cf. Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles, 52–53: “Without a doubt, the most unrelentingly negative characterization of the status of the Gentiles is to be found in Jubilees. … No other text is as categorical in restricting salvation to Israel.”

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tendency to account for what the biblical record left unexplained: it was at a time when the angels who normally guarded Eve were preoccupied with worshiping the Lord that she was deceived by the words of the serpent (Vita 33), who had been deceived by the flattery of the devil (Apoc. Mos. 16), who himself was jealous of humankind because he had been banished from heaven’s glory for his refusal to worship Adam (Vita 12–16). Adam in turn was deceived by the devil, who used Eve’s voice (Apoc. Mos. 21:3–5). All manner of evil befell creation as a result, including the “evil” heart that humans possess and the concrete sins that they commit (Vita 44:2; Apoc. Mos. 10:2; 32:2; cf. 13:5). Yet humans are certainly thought still able to do the good and avoid evil (Apoc. Mos. 28:4; 30:1); indeed, Adam is assured by God, “There shall not be abolished from your seed forever (those who would) serve me” (Vita 27:3). 23. Pseudo-Philo portrays Israel’s habitual waywardness in terms as bleak as those of the Deuteronomistic history itself; still, there is no suggestion that anything other than avoidable faults – the Israelites’ failure to attend to God’s law and the corruption of their own hearts – is responsible (L. A. B. 12:2, 4; 22:5; 28:4; 30:4; 35:3; 49:3). We are reminded at several points of the good things of which humanity has been deprived as a result of Adam’s sin (13:8–9; 19:10; 26:14); but, though the universal sinfulness of his descendants is acknowledged (19:9), it is not itself ascribed to Adam. The gift of God’s everlasting law to Israel made it possible for all humanity – Gentiles explicitly included – to learn and do what is right (11:1–2). And righteous people who proved faithful in the midst of crooked and perverse generations are repeatedly mentioned (1:16; 4:11, 16; 6:3; 16:4–5; 38:1–2, etc.). God-pleasing behavior is thus clearly within human capacities, even if practiced only by a minority. 24. Pseudo-Phocylides is very concerned with the bad things that people do, and tells them not to do them; the operative assumption seems to be that people who are told what not to do are able to comply. The text never speculates about the origin of evil or suggests that evil is more than the bad things that people do.62 25. The Psalms of Solomon, like the Wisdom of Solomon, are explicit in crediting human beings with the capacity to do what is right as well as what is wrong, noting that they will be judged according to their deeds.63 62  On the poem’s peculiar combination of Jewish and Hellenistic traditions and its author as “a highly acculturated Jew, educated in the Greek literary and moral tradition and willing to explore the common ground between his Jewish heritage and his Hellenistic education,” see Barclay, Diaspora, 336–346. 63  Cf. Gathercole, Boasting, 66: “What we have here [in the Psalms of Solomon] is



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Our works (are) in the choosing and power of our souls, to do right and wrong in the works of our hands, and in your righteousness you oversee human beings. The one who does what is right saves up life for himself with the Lord, and the one who does what is wrong causes his own life to be destroyed, for the Lord’s righteous judgments are according to the individual and the household. (Pss. Sol. 9:4–5)

Like their canonical counterparts, these psalms frequently distinguish between the “righteous” and the “sinners.” Both sin, to be sure; but “sinners” are those who arrogantly persist in sinning. The confidence of the righteous (comes) from God their savior;   sin after sin does not visit the house of the righteous. The righteous consistently searches his house,   to remove his unintentional sins. … [The sinner] adds sin upon sin in his life;   he falls – his fall is serious – and he will not get up. The destruction of the sinner is forever,   and he will not be remembered when (God) looks after the righteous. (3:6–11)

God disciplines the righteous so that their sin does not increase (10:1–3; 13:6–11; 16:11); but he destroys the wicked (13:11). 26. The sectarian literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls64 contains descriptions of the “voluntary” entrance into the community of those who undertake its vows (1QS I, 7, 11; V, 1, 6, 8, 10, etc.; cf. 1QH VI, 17–18; XIV, 6–7); expectations or claims of right behavior (or even “perfection”) on the part of its members (1QS I, 13–15; II, 1–2; IX, 18–21; CD II, 14–16; VII, 4–6; 4QMMT 93–94; 1Q28a [1QSa] I, 2–3; 1QpHab VII, 10–12; VIII, 1–3; 1Q28b [1QSb] I, 1–2); exhortations (directed primarily but not exclusively to community members; cf. 4QMMT 109–117) that imply the ability of the exhorted to do as they are told; and condemnations of the wicked that imply (or, indeed, insist on) their responsibility for their misdeeds (1QS II, 11–17; V, 10–13; 4Q169 [4QpNah] 4, III, 3–4; 1QpHab VIII, 8–13; 1QH XII, 12–19; XV, 12–13, etc.). In short, there are abundant grounds for affirming that in this literature, too, humans are deemed able to do both good and evil. Yet the qualifications that must accompany such a claim for the corpus of literature from Qumran are both more numerous and more radical than with any of the other (non-Pauline) texts we have treated. Here we can simply list the most important qualifications without examining them in detail or asking how (or whether) they can be thought to cohere with the evidence noted above for human moral competence.

probably the clearest expression from Second Temple times of a symmetrical judgment according to works, leading to salvation or condemnation.” 64  References and quotations are taken from Martinez, Dead Sea Scrolls.

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i. According to the Community Rule (1QS),65 God has assigned angelic and human beings alike to the dominion of either the Prince of Lights or the Angel of Darkness (1QS III, 17–21; IV, 15–26; cf. 1QM XIII, 9–15; 1QH VI, 11–12). Inasmuch as the lot to which each has been assigned was determined before their birth, God can be said to have created both the righteous and the wicked (1QH VII, 16–26; XII, 38). Moreover, each individual deed done by the righteous and the wicked alike has been predetermined by God (1QS III, 13–17; cf. 1QM I, 10; 4Q180 [4QAges] I, 1–4; 1QH IX, 7–8, 20; cf. what Josephus says about the Essenes, Ant. 13.172; 18.18). The Angel of Darkness exercises “total dominion” over his thralls (1QS III, 20–21); even the Sons of Light are subject to his influence – this explains their continued sins – though God assists them in their struggles (1QS III, 21–25; cf. 11Q5 XIX, 15). From this perspective, then, the Sons of Darkness (including all Gentiles) cannot be said to have the capacity to do good; and that the Sons of Light may do so is (again, from this perspective) not a consequence of any inherent capacity of their own. ii. As we have seen, several texts in Jewish Scripture insist that, in the presence of God, no mere human being can be deemed righteous; the notion finds occasional restatement in post-biblical Jewish literature as well. It becomes a major theme, however, in the Qumran hymns: the continued sinfulness of community members themselves is repeatedly stressed. Any “righteousness” they possess must come from God (cf. 1QH IV, 21–24). O YHWH, do not judge me by my sin because no-one living is just in your presence. (11Q5 XXIV, 7; cf. 1QH XV, 28; XVII, 14–17) [One born of woman] is a structure of dust shaped with water, his base is the guilt of sin, vile unseemliness, source of impurity, over which a spirit of degeneracy rules … Only by your goodness is man acquitted, [purified] by your abundant compa[ssion.] (1QH V, 21–23; cf. IX, 21–23; XII, 29–32) However, I belong to evil humankind to the assembly of wicked flesh; my failings, my transgressions, my sins, […] with the depravities of my heart, belong to the assembly of worms and of those who walk in darkness. 65  The crucial text (the “Sermon on the Two Spirits,” 1QS III, 13-IV, 24) is treated at length in Alexander, “Predestination,” which demonstrates as well that the dualism and determinism of the text is “all pervasive in Qumran theology.” Alexander also notes, however, that the scrolls can speak of people sinning without any suggestion that they are anything other than free agents, faced with choices and choosing between them. He sees in these passages reflections of the everyday human experience of freedom.



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For to man (does not belong) his path, nor to a human being the steadying of his step; since judgment belongs to God, and from his hand is the perfection of the path. (1QS XI, 9–11)

iii. Humans can only do what is right if they know what they are required to do;66 but knowledge of (the correct interpretation of) God’s laws is now confined to the community (1QS IX, 18–21) – and is a signal gift of God’s favor. Others are in no position to obey God’s laws (though, to be sure, those who rejected the Teacher of Righteousness are deemed guilty for that reason). But with those who remained steadfast in God’s precepts, with those who were left from among them, God established his covenant with Israel for ever, revealing to them hidden matters in which all Israel had gone astray: his holy Sabbaths and his glorious feasts, his just stipulations and his truthful paths, and the wishes of his will which man must do in order to live by them. (CD III, 12–16)

Preliminary Conclusions “Can mortals be righteous before God?” Paul’s negative answer to the question follows naturally from his conviction that God “delivered up” his Son for the salvation of humankind. The steps in the argument seem straightforward. 1. God requires goodness of all human beings (a goodness that is spelled out in the Mosaic law). 2. By God’s design, Christ died for our sins. 3. If, in God’s view, humans could be righteous by doing what is good (i. e., through the law), then Christ would not have had to die. 4. Hence, in God’s view, humans cannot do the goodness God requires of them, and “no one will be justified by the works of the law.”67 66 Cf. Alexander’s insistence (“Predestination”) that (in 1QS) “people cannot be righteous without a knowledge of the truth,” and that the “whole practical scheme of salvation” implied in the text is “based on the study of Torah and the words of the Teacher of Righteousness.” 67  Gal 2:16; cf. Rom 3:20. On one of the many interpretations of Gal 2:17, the logic behind the verse (in its context) roughly parallels that spelled out above: Gentiles but not Jews are acknowledged to be “sinners” (2:15); but if “we ourselves who are Jews” have believed in Christ in order to be justified, then it follows that we, too, are “sinners”; i. e., from the solution the plight is defined. Cf. also the pivotal text in Sanders’s argument, Gal 2:21. One should not, of course, attribute Paul’s negative statements about human moral

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Indeed, the radical nature of humanity’s sinfulness can only have been underlined by the drastic nature of the divine remedy: humanity corrupted by sin must die with Christ on the cross if it is to rise to life in the new creation, in which sin can have no place (Romans 6). It would also seem to follow, however, that a Judaism for which Jesus is not the Christ does not have the same reasons for thinking humanity incapable of doing good. Furthermore, a Judaism for which the Sinaitic covenant provides the framework within which God’s favor is enjoyed appears committed to the conviction that human beings (or Jews, at least) can do the good required by the covenant for participation in its blessings. Different understandings of the required “good” account for much of the diversity that characterized Judaism at the turn of the era; but all who think the Sinaitic covenant still in operation as a covenant of blessing must think humans capable of meeting its conditions.68 The anthropologies of Paul and Judaism cannot, then, be considered in isolation from their respective “soteriologies”: different plights demand different solutions, and (as Sanders has reminded us) different solutions demand different plights. Broadly speaking, our survey of the literature supports the notion that Paul’s anthropology, in corresponding to his “soteriology,” is a good deal more “negative” than the anthropology typical among his contemporary Jews. Even a swift survey such as this, however, suggests nuances that may be added to broad claims of this sort. I conclude this paper by listing a number of observations to be tested in a more thorough examination of the literature. 1. Though Jewish sources routinely distinguish between the “righteous” and “sinners/the wicked” based on the fundamental orientation of people’s lives, they also routinely acknowledge that all human beings do in fact sin and that all are in need of God’s mercy. The sense that no human can (really) be “righteous” in God’s eyes is also occasionally represented (e. g., 1 Esdras, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch). It becomes thematic in the Qumran hymns, which stress (as does Paul) that any “righteousness” possessed by humans must be theirs by divine gift.

capacities solely to the logic of such arguments. Paul was clearly affronted (as many Jews were) by the idolatry and immorality of the Gentile world; he must have sensed the enormity of his own wrong in “violently persecuting the church of God” (Gal 1:13); he no doubt shared with other religious Jews a profound sense that, in the presence of God, no human can be “pure,” etc. There is no reason to think that his head and his heart were not at one on this issue. 68  Cf. Watson, Hermeneutics, 342.



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2. The portrayal of God’s people as historically, and perhaps inherently, rebellious is as frequent in post-biblical Jewish writings as in biblical. And as in the Hebrew scriptures, there are occasional references to the transformation that God must bring about in the hearts of his people if they are to participate in the coming age of righteousness. These considerations do not, however, lead to a sense that righteous behavior is beyond human achievement. (See the comments on Baruch, Jubilees, and Pseudo-Philo above. Paul, of course, believed himself to be living in the eschatological age of transformation and new creation, and believed such transformation to be a prerequisite for God-pleasing human behavior.) 3. At times, the number of “righteous” may be seen as very limited indeed (e. g., 4 Ezra, Testament of Abraham, Pseudo-Philo); this, too, does not lead to a sense that righteous behavior is beyond human achievement. (For Paul, “there is none righteous” [Rom 3:10].) 4. Though the sin of Adam and Eve is acknowledged to have brought death to humankind, it is generally not thought to have determined the moral character of their descendants (see 2 Baruch). Where humans are thought to be plagued by an evil heart (or inclination), they are not deemed incapable of doing good (4 Ezra, Life of Adam and Eve, rabbinic texts). (For Paul, Adam’s disobedience made “many [= all] sinners” [Rom 5:19]). 5. An unexpected (and perhaps counter-intuitive) result of our survey is that there appears to be no direct relationship in the texts between the activity of demonic forces and human moral capacities. Where the activity of demonic forces is emphasized (e. g., 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Jubilees), it is not thought to preclude the possibility of human goodness. (In Jubilees, Gentiles ruled by demons are incorrigibly wicked, though whether the rule or the wickedness comes first appears to be a chicken-and-egg proposition.) Conversely, in the texts that are most pessimistic about human moral performance (4 Ezra, Testament of Abraham, PseudoPhilo), demonic forces are not a factor. (Nor, as we have seen, do they figure largely in Paul’s accounts of human sin.) 6. The sectarian literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls is here an exception: those under the rule of the Angel of Darkness (a “lot” to which they have been assigned) are incapable of pleasing God and destined for damnation. The predestination of the Scrolls does not, however, eliminate human responsibility. 7. Where (as in Jubilees) righteous behavior is thought to be found only among those who submit to the distinctively Jewish practices prescribed in the Mosaic law (thus automatically excluding Gentiles who do not know

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them), or where (as in the sectarian literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls) it is thought to be found only among those who submit to a recently revealed interpretation of Mosaic statutes (thus automatically excluding most Jews as well), the Jewish literature introduces limitations to the possibilities of human righteousness unknown even to Paul. 8. A number of Jewish texts envisage the possibility of Gentiles who are righteous as Gentiles (e. g., Wisdom of Solomon, Pseudo-Phocylides); others are at least open to Gentiles who are willing to become proselytes (e. g., Judith, Joseph and Asenath). Some texts, however, write off the entire Gentile world as hopelessly mired in sin (e. g., Jubilees, the sectarian literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls). (For Paul, “there is no difference” between Jews and Gentiles in terms either of sinfulness or of the path to righteousness through faith [Rom 3:22–23, 29–30].) 9. A number of texts add vast numbers of contemporary Jews to the ranks of “sinners.” This is, as noted above, particularly true of the Qumran literature. Here, though life is still lived within the framework of the Mosaic covenant, the correct interpretation of its laws is a matter of recent revelation, and obedience to God’s will is only possible within the community to which that revelation was entrusted. In a sense, then, the Qumran literature occupies a half-way position between, on the one hand, those Jews who believed that God’s favor was enjoyed by all who were willing to submit to the laws of the covenant, and Paul, who no longer regarded the Sinaitic covenant as a salvific institution. Bibliography Alexander, Philip S. “Predestination and Free Will in the Theology of the Dead Sea Scrolls.” In Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, edited by John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole. London: T. & T. Clark, 2006, 27–49. Avemarie, Friedrich. “The Tension between God’s Command and Israel’s Obedience as Reflected in the Early Rabbinic Literature.” In Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, edited by John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole. London: T. & T. Clark, 2006, 50–70. Barclay, John M. G. “‘By the Grace of God I Am What I Am’: Grace and Agency in Philo and Paul.” In Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, edited by John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole. London: T. & T. Clark, 2006, 140–157. – Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora from Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE – 117 CE). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Bauckham, Richard. “Apocalypses.” In Justification and Variegated Nomism, Vol. 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism, edited by D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001, 135–187.



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Boccaccini, Gabriele. “Inner-Jewish Debate on the Tension between Divine and Human Agency in Second Temple Judaism.” In Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, edited by John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole. London: T. & T. Clark, 2006, 9–26. – Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought, 300 BCE to 200 CE. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991. – Roots of Rabbinic Judaism: An Intellectual History, from Ezekiel to Daniel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. Charlesworth, James H., editor. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Vols. 1–2. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983–1985. Collins, John J. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity. New York: Crossroad, 1987. – Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora. New York: Crossroad, 1986. Donaldson, Terence L. Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional World. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997. Engberg-Pedersen, Troels. “Self-Sufficiency and Power: Divine and Human Agency in Epictetus and Paul.” In Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, edited by John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole. London: T. & T. Clark, 2006, 117–139. Garcia Martinez, Florentino. The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996. Gathercole, Simon J. “Sin in God’s Economy: Agencies in Romans 1 and 7.” In Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, edited by John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole. London: T. & T. Clark, 2006, 158–172. – Where is Boasting? Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul’s Response in Romans 1–5. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. Gowan, Donald E. “Wisdom.” In Justification and Variegated Nomism, Vol. 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism, edited by D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001, 215–239. Hengel, Martin. Judaism and Hellenisim: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974. Laato, Timo. Paul and Judaism: An Anthropological Approach. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995. Lapide, Pinchas, and Peter Stuhlmacher, Paul: Rabbi and Apostle. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984. Lauterbach, Jacob Z., translator and editor. Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1933. Montefiore, Claude G. Judaism and St. Paul. London: Goschen, 1914. Nickelsburg, George W. E. 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36; 81–108. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001. Räisänen, Heikki. Paul and the Law. Tübingen: Mohr, 1983. Sanders, E. P. Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977. Sandmel, Samuel. The Genius of Paul. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Schoeps, Hans Joachim. Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961. Skehan, Patrick W., and Alexander A. Di Lella. The Wisdom of Ben Sira: A New Translation with Notes. New York: Doubleday, 1987. Stone, Michael Edward. Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990.

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Watson, Francis. “Constructing an Antithesis: Pauline and Other Jewish Perspectives on Divine and Human Agency.” In Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, edited by John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole. London: T. & T. Clark, 2006, 99–116. – Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith. London: T. & T. Clark, 2004. Westerholm, Stephen. Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988. – Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Winninge, Mikael. Sinners and the Righteous: A Comparative Study of the Psalms of Solomon and Paul’s Letters. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1995. Winston, David. The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979. Wrede, William. Paul. Lexington, KY: American Library Association Committee on Reprinting, 1962.

Chapter 5

Four Maccabees: A Paraenetic Address? To the question of my title only one reply can be given, both obvious and unilluminating: whether or not 4 Maccabees can be labeled a “paraenetic address” depends on what is meant by “paraenetic.” No scholarly consensus on the usage of the word now exists; and since 4 Maccabees, while showing (what we may, for the moment, loosely label) a “paraenetic intent,” does not resemble literature that, since Dibelius, has been commonly called (on more formal grounds) “paraenesis,” we are clearly dealing with a text that fits some, but not other, understandings of the label. Four Maccabees thus represents an ambiguous, borderline, and therefore interesting case for a project aimed at bringing discipline and precision to the usage of the term. Whereas texts that fit all (or no) understandings of “paraenesis” are of little help in assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of various proposals, 4 Maccabees allows us to see whether a particular proposal, when applied to an ambiguous case, illuminates that text: does it draw attention to features in this text that are shared with texts unambiguously paraenetic, thereby telling us something about 4 Maccabees that we might otherwise have overlooked? Or, conversely, does it illuminate 4 Maccabees by drawing attention to its lack of specific features found in texts that are recognizably paraenetic? In short, 4 Maccabees provides us with a fine test-case for the heuristic value of particular understandings of “paraenesis,” and will be studied here with that focus in mind.1 I begin with an overview of the content of 4 Maccabees. In the process, I will note features of the book that relate to various understandings of “paraenesis,” but try not to allow one particular understanding to circum1  In what follows, except where otherwise noted, I use the adjective “paraenetic” as applicable to whatever may, and only to what may, be designated by the noun “paraenesis.” I will, however, raise the question whether the adjective may not conveniently be allowed a wider range of reference than the noun.  – While 4 Maccabees serves as a fine test-case for understandings of “paraenesis” reached through the study of other texts, the absence from the book of the term παραίνεσις and its cognates means that it can scarcely serve as the basis for formulating an understanding – if we assume, as seems reasonable, that any understanding of the term should at least take its starting point in its ancient usage. See further the discussion below.  – This paper benefited from responses offered by various participants in the Paraenesis Project, and particularly from its thorough and expert review by Troels Engberg-Pedersen. Neither he nor the others are responsible for remaining deficiencies.

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scribe what we see and do not see in the text. A second section, though not ignoring other proposals for the usage of the term, will focus on the tentative description of “paraenesis” arrived at in the deliberations of the Paraenesis Project. The question to be asked is, in the first place, whether 4 Maccabees – or any of its parts – is “paraenetic” on this understanding of the term, and secondly, whether posing the question proves a useful exercise. In a third section, a few points of comparison will be drawn between 4 Maccabees and the better known Pauline paraenesis, illustrating features characteristic of Jewish and Christian paraenesis (on this understanding of the term) as well as differences in emphasis between them.

Four Maccabees in Brief Four Maccabees is ostensibly the prepared text or transcript of a public address delivered by a speaker identified simply as “I”2 to an audience ad­ dressed generally as “you” (1:1, 7; 2:6; 3:3, etc.) on an occasion specified merely as “this season of the year” (or perhaps, more blandly still, “this time”).3 Whether the text was meant to be given as an oral address or merely adopts this form as a fictive device is unclear: features of the text that point to its character as a speech are explicable on either hypothesis.4 We need not resolve that issue to raise the further question about the setting in which the oration (real or fictive) is thought to be given. The answer is in any case the same: we do not know.5 Some scholars suggest a synagogue homily; others, however, deem that unlikely, given that the address takes its starting point in a philosophical thesis to be demonstrated rather than a text of Scripture to be interpreted and applied. Some propose that the address was intended (or imagined) to be given at a ceremony commemorating the valor of the Maccabean martyrs whose story it tells, perhaps at Antioch, the traditional location for their death and burial.6 Much of the text would suit such an occasion; nothing in the text demands it.7 2  I. e., by finite verbs in the first person. Participles used in agreement with these verbs have masculine forms (1:1, 12, etc.); accordingly, we may use masculine pronouns of our author. The Greek text of 4 Maccabees cited throughout is that of Rahlfs. English translations are my own. 3 Greek κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν καιρόν (1:10; cf. 3:19). 4 Arguing in favor of an actual speech is Dupont-Sommer, Livre, 20–25; for the opposing position, see Breitenstein, Beobachtungen, 143, 157; and Norden, Kunstprosa, 416–418. 5  Various suggestions are discussed in deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 22–25; Klauck, 4 Makkabäerbuch, 663–665. 6  See the discussion in Dupont-Sommer, Livre, 67–75; Hadas, Maccabees, 103–109. 7  The dating of the text is similarly disputed. Bickerman (Studies, 276–281) thinks the



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As for the ostensible audience (the “implicit” audience, if you will), it is patently and exclusively Jewish. References throughout the text to “our ancestors,” “our fatherland,” and the like8 indicate that the (ostensible) speaker and his audience share a common Jewish heritage. Removing all doubt is the apostrophe in 18:1:9 “O Israelite children, offspring of the seed of Abraham, obey this law and show devotion to God in every way.” Indeed, the author/speaker presupposes throughout his address his audience’s comprehension of allusions to the characters, stories, and laws of the Jewish scriptures; it is their continued commitment that he wishes to secure. To Jews our text is directed, possibly to commemorate a significant moment in Jewish history. But nothing in the text indicates that the audience has gathered to be addressed at some particular milestone, or because of some imminent crisis, in their own lives. No defined segment of the Jewish population is addressed by the author at any point in his oration. And although the text is much preoccupied with a notorious instance of persecution in the past, such memories are scarcely recalled only by those facing similar threats.10 At least (and this, in a consideration of the nature of the text, is significant in itself), the text gives no indication of being provoked by a transitional or decisive moment in the lives of its addressees. Of the author himself we can say little. He was Jewish, as we have seen. He was not Josephus, though Eusebius thought so and the book was at times transmitted together with Josephus’s works.11 With the nature and extent of his philosophical training we need not concern ourselves here.12 work should be dated between 18 and 55 CE , though others date the work to the second century. For discussions, see deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 14–18; Klauck, 4 Makkabäerbuch, 668–669. 8  See 3:20; 4:5, 20; 7:1, etc. Similarly unambiguous are references to “the people,” “the fatherland,” or “the law,” where no further definition is thought necessary (1:11, 17, etc.). Note that the author is sensitive to the need to define “law” more closely when, in the speeches of the martyrs, non-Jews are addressed (5:18, 33; 6:21, etc.). Note, too, that the author shares with those he addresses a common understanding of foods “forbidden to us” (1:33–34). 9  The authenticity of the verse was questioned by Dupont-Sommer, Livre, 152, but is defended in recent studies. See deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 31–32; Klauck, 4 Makkabäerbuch, 657–659. 10  See O’Hagan, “Martyr,” 94–120, who argues against the idea that 4 Maccabees was written for a persecuted people. John Barclay notes that the Jewish audience is by no means urged to “view their social world as implacably hostile,” though “the work does reflect a Judaism which is wary of social pressures” (Barclay, Diaspora, 376). See also Klauck, 4 Makkabäerbuch, 664. 11  See deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 12. 12  The subject is, of course, of great interest to commentators and other students of the book. The author’s competence in philosophic matters is positively assessed, e. g., by Renehan, “Background”; cf. also deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 51–52. A very negative judgment is given by Breitenstein, Beobachtungen, 132, 179; also Barclay, Diaspora, 371.

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Perhaps his superior education, or perhaps his standing in the community, was thought to entitle him to a hearing: we are not told. In a consideration of the nature of our text, that in itself is important: nowhere in the text is it claimed that this author, on the basis of this characteristic, can speak with authority to this audience. Nor, conversely, is the tone adopted that of familiarity or friendship: the audience is never addressed as “beloved,” “brothers (and sisters),” or the like. No reference is made to experiences shared by the author and those he addresses. In short, the author relies neither on personal authority nor on personal ties to his audience to enforce what he has to say. Agreement is apparently sought on the strength of the argument alone. What the author offers his readers13 is, according to the opening verse, a demonstration14 of the thesis that “devout reason is absolute master of the passions (εἰ αὐτοδέσποτός ἐστιν τῶν παθῶν ὁ εὐσεβὴς λογισμός).” What is not said is, for our purposes, as significant as what is: taken at face value, the address is not introduced as a homily encouraging listeners themselves to develop “devout reason” or admonishing them to use their “devout reason” to overcome their own besetting “passions.” Instead, an abstract thesis is proposed for their consideration, and the only advice actually given is for the audience to “attend diligently” to the author’s “philosophical” discourse (συμβουλεύσαιμ᾽ ἄν ὑμῖν ὀρθῶς ὅπως προσέχητε προθύμως τῇ φιλοσοφίᾳ).15 13  Hereafter, I will speak of the “author” and his “readers” rather than the “speaker” and his “audience” unless the purported setting is explicitly in view. 14  In 1:7–8, 12, the author says that he could demonstrate (ἔχοιμ᾽ ἄν ὑμῖν ἐπιδεῖξαι) his thesis in a number of ways, but that he would do it much the best by telling of the nobility of the martyrs; he will proceed to do so, however, only after beginning with (a clarification of) his thesis itself (ἀρξαμένῳ τῆς ὑποθέσεως). That beginning clearly lasts until 3:18; then we are told (3:19) that “the time has come for the narrative demonstration of temperate reason (ἤδη δὲ καὶ ὁ καιρὸς ἡμᾶς καλεῖ ἐπὶ τὴν ἀπόδειξιν τῆς ἱστορίας τοῦ σώφρονος λογισμοῦ).” Clearly, that heading applies to the remainder of the book (17:7–18:24 forming a peroration to the whole), whatever similarities may be noted with eulogies, commemorative speeches, and the like. For 4 Maccabees as an epideictic (or demonstrative) speech, see deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 26; Klauck, 4 Makkabäerbuch, 659–662. Among features characteristic of epideictic rhetoric that are found in 4 Maccabees, we may note, in addition to the author’s explicit attempt to demonstrate a philosophical thesis, his (equally explicit) concern to “praise” both virtue in general and that of the martyrs in particular (1:2, 10; note that epideictic is “commonly regarded as the oratory of praise or blame” [Kennedy, Interpretation, 73]), and its possible connection (as noted above) with a special, celebratory occasion (see Kennedy, Interpretation, 73–75). That epideictic speeches “also sought some response from the audience, which was generally that they should also make it their aim to devote themselves to a particular virtue or to defend the city’s way of life,” is duly noted by deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 47 – and true of 4 Maccabees as well (cf. Kennedy, Interpretation, 73: “Funeral orations and panegyrics [i. e., typical occasions for epideictic oratory] were intended to be persuasive and often imply some need for actions, though in a more general way than does deliberative oratory”). 15 That the “philosophy” to which readers are to attend is the author’s discourse



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If we may leap ahead for a moment, we may note that, from time to time throughout the speech, the author addresses his audience directly with a verb in the imperative mood or some equivalent form (1:30; 2:14; 8:16; 14:11, 13; 16:5; 18:1). Apart from 18:1 (to which we must return), the import of these directives is always to give attention to the point under discussion, never to show a particular kind of behavior or attitude. It is not, it seems, that kind of speech. Or, at least, not at the surface level. Two further observations on the opening statement of the author’s thesis should, however, be added. First, the thesis is one of moral philosophy, and the terms used carry connotations, acquired through a long history of ethical discussions, of moral obligations: the very terms “devout” and “reason” have the ring of things to be pursued, while “passions,” we all know, are to be controlled.16 Clearly, then, there is more at stake for the audience in such a thesis than in one pertaining to the angles of a triangle – and our author hastens to say as much. The subject he is discussing is “essential to the path to knowledge (εἰς ἐπιστήμην) for everyone” and “entails praise of the greatest virtue (τῆς μεγίστης ἀρετῆς … περιέχει ἔπαινον)” (1:2). Thus, though formally we are given to anticipate a philosophical demonstration, we may well feel from the outset that it is one designed, implicitly at least, to summon the audience to a particular way of life.17 The second observation is that nothing in the proposed thesis is distinctively Jewish.18 The language is that of Greek moral philosophy, the thesis as basic to a powerful strand in that tradition as one could imagine. But given that (as we have seen) the author and his audience share a common Jewish heritage, we may well suspect that the author has concerns and an agenda a good deal more specific than the terms of the thesis itself would rather than “philosophy’ (or something like “the philosophical life”) in general is clear from the motivation for such attention given in the next verse: “for the subject [here discussed] is essential to the path to knowledge for everyone. Furthermore, it entails praise of the greatest virtue …” See Anderson, “4 Maccabees,” 544; Klauck, 4 Makkabäerbuch, 686. 16  They cannot, for our author, be eradicated (1:6; 3:2–5). The relation of this claim to Stoic understandings is discussed by Renehan, “Background,” 226–227, 232–238. Apart from its philosophical background, however, we should note that our author believes the passions to be divinely created and hence hardly a suitable object for eradication (see deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 53–54; Klauck, 4 Makkabäerbuch, 666). 17  Cf. deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 47: “The philosophical demonstration is also a species of epideictic rhetoric” that “asks the hearers to consider the value of a particular way of life, and often seeks a commitment from the audience to follow it.” 18  Admittedly, if the only true or appropriate religious devotion (εὐσέβεια) is that by which the one true and living God is served and by which Torah, his revealed law, is practiced, then “devout reason (ὁ εὐσεβὴς λογισμός)” is to be found only among the adherents of Judaism. Our author appears to believe this (see 7:18–19; 9:18), but the terms of his thesis do not require such an interpretation.

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lead one to believe. It would at any rate be perilous to assess the thrust of his discourse solely on the basis of its introduction. Of the “many and diverse” demonstrations of which his thesis is patient, much the best (our author assures us) is a narrative one: in the account of the bravery of Eleazar, the “seven brothers,” and their mother, we may see that “reason has full command of the passions” (1:7–9). Before turning to the demonstration itself, however, our author intends to clarify the terms of his thesis (1:12). Definitions are needed of “reason” and “passion,” and the various types of passion require clarification. The discussion that follows (1:13–3:18), leading up to the “narrative demonstration,” cannot be reckoned among the supreme achievements of philosophic acumen or taxonomic clarity, and does not require close attention here. Still, several observations on this section of the book are in order. 1. It quickly becomes apparent that, for our author, the “devout reason” that overcomes the passions is inculcated by the Jewish law. “Wisdom” is explicitly identified with “training in the law (ἡ τοῦ νόμου παιδεία), training by which we learn divine matters reverentially and human matters advantageously” (1:17). The underlying rationale is spelled out in a crucial passage in chapter 2: Now when God fashioned human beings, he planted in them their passions and inclinations, but at the same time he enthroned the mind among the senses as a sacred governor over all, and to this mind he gave the law. The one who adopts a way of life in accordance with it will rule a kingdom that is temperate, just, good, and courageous. (2:21–23)

The combination of Jewish conviction and a framework taken from a broader tradition of moral thought is nowhere better captured.19 The call for the rule of the mind over the passions and for the practice of the cardinal virtues20 is the stuff of Plato, not Proverbs. Yet the author’s affirmations of the divine origin of the passions, of the mind’s ascendancy, and (above all, of course) of Torah as the mind’s guide are all based on a Jewish monotheistic faith that has made its own the terms and categories of a broader moral tradition. There is no reason to suspect that our author merely packages his Jewish convictions in a deceptive guise to gain them converts or respect: why should a Jew not have endorsed a life that is “temperate, just, good, and courageous,” or believed that God gave Torah with such a noble goal in mind? To our author’s way of thinking, the best aspirations of pagan moral 19  Cf. Collins, Identity, 191: “The apologetic peculiarity of 4 Maccabees lies in its combination of a rigid, uncompromising obedience to the law, in all its details, with a thoroughly Hellenized consciousness.” 20  Three of the four cardinal virtues lie behind the adjectives in 2:23 (only wisdom, or prudence, is missing). All four appear together in 1:2–4, 18. See also 5:23–24; 15:10.



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thought find their fulfillment among Torah-observant Jews. It is such Jews rather than their (many times more numerous) pagan neighbors who are in tune with reality. 2. Such Torah observance includes all the precepts of the law, those traditionally thought to set Jews apart from other nations as well as those of obviously universal application. People who observe the Decalogue’s prohibition of covetousness will overcome the lust for gratification (2:4–6). Greed is mastered by those who follow Torah’s precepts to lend without interest, to cancel debts in the seventh year, and to refrain from gleaning the harvest or gathering the last of their vineyard’s grapes (2:8–9). Those who abstain from foods prohibited by Torah overcome “the passions of the appetites” (1:33–35). In the last-mentioned instance, laws that notoriously distinguished Jews from non-Jews are thought to promote the achievement of goals to which Gentile moralists aspire.21 3. Torah, then, prescribes the true path to virtue. Such, at least, is the case for Jews, and it is Jews whom our author addresses. Curiously, in spite of his appropriation of ideals from a broader moral tradition, he betrays no interest in whether (or how) non-Jews can achieve the same moral ends.22 If God indeed ordained the mind to rule the passions and Torah to govern the mind, then conformity with Torah is presumably the path to virtue for all;23 but the point is never made explicit. With the behavior of Gentiles for their own sakes, our author is not (here?) concerned. 4. On the other hand, not even the Jews who are addressed by our author are directly exhorted, at this stage in his argument, to observe the law, practice virtue, overcome their passions, or the like. We can hardly doubt that our author thought it would be a Good Thing if they did so. Indeed, he can only have hoped that his discourse would lead them to value, and hence loyally obey, the ancestral law. But he is not here admonishing them to do so. We have, after all, been given to expect a philosophical discourse, not a homily; 21  The point is underlined (with a disregard for verisimilitude typical of our author) in the exchange attributed to Antiochus and Eleazar prior to the latter’s execution. The two are portrayed as sharing common goals: adherence to true philosophy, living in a way that is directed by reason and in accordance with nature, practicing the cardinal virtues. What they debate is Eleazar’s claim that obedience to the Jewish law promotes these goals (5:5–26). 22 Barclay, Diaspora, 374–375. 23  See also 11:5. In 1:2, we are told that the subject matter of the discourse is “essential to the path to knowledge for everyone.” For Gentiles as well as Jews, then, “devout reason” is the path to “knowledge” – and, if pressed, our author would probably have declared that “devout reason” is only to be found where Torah is practiced (cf. 9:18). But the issue of Gentile observance of Torah, in part or as a whole, is not raised.

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and all that is said in the opening discussion (as far as 3:18) is cited in support of the thesis that “devout reason is absolute master of the passions.” 5. Even before the narrative demonstration of the thesis beginning in 3:19, the author makes reference to the way Joseph, Moses, and David used reason to restrain their passions.24 Worth noting again, however, is that, though our author must have thought their behavior exemplary, he at no point encourages his audience to follow in their footsteps. All that the author explicitly derives from their stories are further illustrations of his (by now tiresomely repeated) thesis (2:1–3, 17–18; 3:6–18). The remainder of the book (3:19–18:24) is taken up largely with the stories of Jewish martyrs at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes and by reflections inspired by their tales. The narrative begins with an incident involving Apollonius, governor of Syria, in which he was miraculously thwarted in his attempt to appropriate funds entrusted to the treasury of the Jerusalem temple (4:1–14). No conclusion is drawn from the story (it is, for once, not related to our author’s thesis), though it was no doubt felt to show the protection that God affords the faithful – in contrast with the troubles that follow when the law is violated (cf. 4:19–21). The remainder of chapter 4 gives the background for Antiochus’s decree that observance of the ancestral law of the Jews was punishable by death. The martyrdom of Eleazar the priest provides the subject matter for chapters 5 to 7; that of seven brothers, for 8:1–14:10; and the steadfastness of their mother is treated in 14:11–17:6. Further reflections on the constancy of all, woven around a speech by the mother to her sons (18:6–19), complete the book (17:7–18:24). For this section, too, sundry observations must suffice. 1. The thesis announced at the beginning of the book is never far from view. After the account of the death of Eleazar and before the narrative of the seven brothers (6:31–7:23), and, again, after their stories and before that of their mother (13:1–14:10), our author directly addresses his audience with stretches of florid prose in which he variously presses his constant claim: such steadfastness must banish all doubt about the supremacy of reason over the passions. Within the narratives themselves, the characters are frequently made to speak in terms that suggest that our author’s thesis is very much on their minds as well (e. g., 5:23–24; 9:17; 11:27); even gruesome tortures and the proximity of a ghastly death present opportunities not to be lost for echoing the proposition.

24  Reference is also made to Jacob’s censure of Simeon and Levi for failing to restrain their anger. This, too, is taken as an indication that the passions can be subdued by reason (2:19–20).



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2. For our author, as we have seen, “devout reason” is developed and expressed by adherence to Torah. That faithfulness to the ancestral law was at stake in each martyrdom is, again and again, conveyed to the reader through the author’s reflections and the speeches attributed to the various characters in his narrative. As the book draws to a close, the author’s thesis and his conviction about its exemplification unite in an exhortation that begins climactically enough, though it trails off into pedantry: O Israelite children, offspring of the seed of Abraham, obey this law and show devotion to God in every way, knowing that devout reason is master of the passions and of pains, not only of those from within, but also of those from without. (18:1–2)

3. Much was made above of the absence of exhortations directly addressed by the author to his readers in the opening sections of the book. The trend continues until the citation just given. Apart from pleas for his audience’s attention, it is first and only in 18:1 that readers are explicitly told what to do. 4. Still, no reader can doubt that 18:1–2 sums up the message of the book. The tales of martyrdom are told to inspire loyalty to Torah. The arguments by which the persecutors urge the prospective martyrs to compromise, appealing both to their reason25 and to their sense of prudence, 26 are ones that Jews living in the Diaspora were liable to encounter. These arguments are (for the benefit of readers) met forcefully with counterclaims maintaining that faithfulness to Torah is both the more reasonable27 and, in the end (i. e., 25  In 5:5–13, Antiochus suggests that Eleazar’s religion is incompatible with philosophy, since it leads him to reject the gifts of nature (i. e., foods forbidden to Jews by their law). In any case, the deity overseeing Eleazar’s conduct would excuse transgression committed under duress (a point repeated in 8:14, 22, 25).  – It is worth noting that the extended conversations between persecutors and persecuted in 4 Maccabees are in marked contrast with what is found in 2 Maccabees, our author’s source. Though 2 Maccabees places in the mouths of the martyrs expressions of defiance toward their tormentors and faith in God, no real dialogue occurs. Apart from an appeal (in indirect speech) to Eleazar to escape death by feigning compliance with the king’s command (2 Macc 6:21–22), a blunt threat to one of the brothers to eat or be tortured limb by limb (7:7), and a bribe (again, indirectly reported) to the youngest of the seven (7:24), the oppressors remain speechless, unreasoning thugs. Clearly, our author, by way of contrast, takes the opportunity to put on the lips of the oppressors arguments that Jews tempted to compromise their faith would be likely to encounter. 26  E. g., 8:5–11. The point is underlined that faithfulness to Torah might well hinder one’s advancement in society (cf. Klauck, 4 Makkabäerbuch, 664, who draws attention to indications in the text that the author may think his audience tempted by such ambitions). Imprudence is also attributed to those who would retain their commitment to Jewish observance at the cost of their lives. 27  The author’s claim that adherence to Torah allows one to cultivate the various virtues and enables one to overcome the passions is repeated by Eleazar (5:23–24). Eleazar notes as well that the God who has given his law to human beings is also their Creator, and hence that the law must be suited to their nature. To live by the law is thus to live in

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when an afterlife featuring retribution for the deeds of this life is taken into account), 28 the more rewarding path to take. The various speeches in which those about to be martyred urge their fellow Jews (6:22), brothers (9:23–24; 13:9–18), or sons (16:16–23; cf. 18:7–19) to “die for devotion to God” are all designed to motivate Jewish readers to remain steadfast in their own (presumably, less extreme) situations.29 We need not doubt the sincerity with which our author argues that such faithfulness to the law proves the superiority of reason (instructed by the law!) over the passions. But if no mere guise, the “philosophical” thesis is nonetheless utilized as a tool to urge Jews to show loyalty to their ancestral way of life. Such, in brief, is 4 Maccabees. Is it, or does it contain, “paraenesis”?

A Paraenetic Address? The answer depends (as noted above) on what is meant by “paraenesis.” The word – which we may render “advice” – was by no means a purely technical term in antiquity (any more than “advice” is in English today), nor did it designate a recognized literary genre.30 Undoubtedly, advice – both formal and informal, sought and unsought – flowed as freely in the ancient world as it does today. Still, it is – and has always been – expected in certain kinds of relationships and situations more than in others, and tends – and has always tended – to take on recognizable characteristics in recurring circumstances where advice-giving is typical. Naturally, then, thinkers both ancient and modern have found it worthwhile to try to define the types of relationships and situations in which advice is typically given and the characteristics that it commonly shows. Furthermore, those who interpret texts have found it important to distinguish “advice” from other, closely related, forms of speech: if we are to think clearly and speak precisely, how are we to distinguish “advice” from “exhortation,” or “encouragement,” or “command”? In some cases, the distinctions drawn follow those normally and unreflectingly observed in everyday speech: people do differentiate between “advice” and “commands.” In other cases, the interpretation of a text may require that careful distinctions be drawn between words (such as “advise” and “encourage”) harmony with nature (5:25–26). On the “paraenetic” character of Eleazar’s speech, see further below. 28  See 9:8; 13:17; 16:25; 17:18; and, for the retribution of the wicked, 9:9, 32; 10:11, 21; 11:3, 23, etc. 29 Niebuhr, Gesetz, 218. 30 Popkes, Paränese, 24–25. Starr, “Paraenesis,” draws attentions to the lack of technical or formal boundaries in Plutarch’s usage of παραίνεσις.



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whose usage overlaps promiscuously in everyday speech. Such distinctions may be useful for the interpretation even of texts formulated with no awareness of them; they are obviously critical to the interpretation of texts formulated by authors aware of the distinctions and intending what they write to be classified in one category rather than another. The problems facing modern scholars who would bring precision to the usage of the term “paraenesis” are partly historical, partly heuristic. Historically, one wants to know in the first place at what point, and with what force, “paraenesis” became a technical designation for a certain (carefully defined) kind of text, and, secondly, which ancient authors intended what they wrote to be read as “paraenetic” in the restricted sense. Heuristically, one wants to know how the term is most usefully employed today: what characteristics should one require of a text to be designated “paraenesis,” which ones may be treated as optional, and which are irrelevant? One can scarcely address the contemporary heuristic issues without some awareness of the historical realities: should a proposed understanding of “paraenesis” bear little relation to the term’s usage in antiquity, it would simply be dismissed as wrong. On the other hand, “paraenesis” has been used by scholars of antiquity (particularly those of early Christian writings) for many generations, so that one can hardly expect a proposal for how the term ought to be employed today to win acceptance if it ignores the way the word has, over time, come to be used. To be viable, then, a proposal must both be informed by ancient usage and bring precision to current understandings. It can also reasonably be expected to enable scholars to determine whether particular texts are appropriately and illuminatingly deemed paraenetic – including texts whose status is unclear when the term is used less precisely. Unfortunately, the study of 4 Maccabees has nothing to offer to the resolution of the historical problems: since the book never uses παραίνεσις or any of its cognates, it illuminates neither the everyday nor the technical usage of the terms in antiquity. And though an author aware of a technical usage of παραίνεσις could of course compose such a text without employing the word, 4 Maccabees is most unlikely to have been written with any such agenda in mind: otherwise, it would surely have resembled more closely texts that are recognizably “paraenetic.” Alas, 4 Maccabees is equally ill suited to serve as the basis for formulating a modern, heuristic description of “paraenesis.” To arrive at such a description, one must take into account both ancient usage of the term (but 4 Maccabees does not use it) and the characteristics of texts that designate themselves, or have traditionally been designated, or seem intuitively to be appropriately designated, as paraenetic: but 4 Maccabees is excluded on each of these counts. If, then, 4 Maccabees is to contribute to the understanding of paraenesis, we must make a virtue of the book’s (at best) ambiguously

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paraenetic status: the book is well suited to serve as a test case for exploring the usefulness of descriptions arrived at through the study of other materials. Such a description has been proposed – after the study of a good deal of other materials – by the deliberations of the Paraenetic Project. The modest contribution to be made here is to explore the applicability and illustrative capacity of that description in the case of 4 Maccabees; in passing, however, we will note whether, on other understandings of the term as well, our text may be deemed “paraenetic.” According to the proposal, “paraenesis” is concise, benevolent injunction that (i) reminds of moral practices to be pursued or avoided; (ii) expresses a shared, articulated world view; and (iii) does not anticipate disagreement. Such a description may fairly be said to heed modern heuristic considerations: a number of texts customarily designated paraenetic show these characteristics, and the term, when spelled out in this way, draws attention to important features that they share in common. It reflects historical judgments as well. Troels Engberg-Pedersen in particular has argued that, whereas prior to Stoicism, “paraenesis” meant a piece of (specific) moral advice (though not, more broadly, “moral exhortation”), the Stoics used the term for advice advanced in explicit relation to the ultimate good; in other words (the words of our proposed description), for advice that is formulated within the framework of an articulated world view. For our purposes, we may begin by asking whether any of the speeches contained within 4 Maccabees may be designated “paraenetic” on this understanding of the term. At issue are the speeches delivered by Eleazar to his fellow-Jews, by the dying brothers to each other, and by the mother to her sons. (Though advice flows freely in the exchanges between Antiochus and those he is about to execute, it cannot be deemed “paraenetic” on this understanding since it expresses neither benevolence nor a world view that the speakers and those addressed share in common.31) Five passages come into question. 1. In 6:17–23, Eleazar responds to those “of the king’s retinue” who invite him to save himself by pretending to eat pork. He begins by declaring that 31  Of course, these exchanges are not “paraenetic” on other understandings either. Dibelius & Co. would find nothing here that resembled a stringing together of admonitions of general ethical content: the advice given on either side is highly situational. Abraham Malherbe, for whom a “philophronetic style” represents “good paraenetic form” (“Moralists,” 292) is not (I suspect) likely to think Antiochus’s offers of friendship to those he is about to torture sufficient to warrant the designation. Leo Perdue, though no doubt impressed by the “liminal setting” in which those about to be roasted alive find themselves, would note, as I do above, that the guidance offered them does not take place within a shared “comprehensive understanding of social reality” (“Character,” 6); and so on.



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such a course of conduct would be unreasonable and shameful; then, directing words to his fellow Israelites as a whole, he says, “So then, O children of Abraham, die nobly for devotion to God!” The directive is both concise and (in intention, at least!) benevolent. And it is moral: upon those faced with the alternatives of preserving their lives or maintaining their loyalty to their ancestral faith, Eleazar enjoins the latter choice. It is noteworthy, too, that in the immediate context, Eleazar has gone a long way toward articulating the world view that informs his plea. Responding to Antiochus’s advice to save himself by eating pork, Eleazar insists that it would be wrong to transgress the divine law that Jews have adopted as their way of life, even in matters that seem trivial. Conversely, Jewish willingness to conform to the divine law marks them out as the adherents of a most sensible philosophy; the law, after all, inculcates in its practitioners the virtues of temperance, courage, justice, and devotion to God (5:16–24). Moreover, one can be sure that a law imposed on human beings by their Creator will require conduct that is in accordance with human nature as he created it (5:25–26). In the words immediately leading up to Eleazar’s charge to his fellow countrymen, the reasonableness of the path that Eleazar has chosen (and that he urges on his Jewish listeners) continues to be emphasized: For it would be unreasonable if, after we have lived life until old age in accordance with truth, and maintained, by observing the law, the reputation of such a life, we should now change our course and ourselves become a model of irreverence for the young, so that we should set a precedent for eating defiling food. It would be shameful if we should survive but a little while and during that time be a laughing-stock to all for our cowardice; shameful if we were despised by the tyrant as unmanly, and did not champion our divine law even unto death. (6:18–21)

The injunction that follows is then introduced as the logical consequence of the considerations just expressed: “So then [πρὸς ταῦτα , “with a view to these things”],32 O children of Abraham, die nobly for devotion to God!” (6:23). Note, too, that though the views advanced by Eleazar are undoubtedly dismissed by Antiochus, Eleazar does not anticipate any disagreement in principle from the Jews to whom he directs his charge. That a very real moral choice is involved, and that Jews may well be tempted not to live up to their convictions when their lives are at stake is, of course, the reality that necessitates the injunction; but nothing suggests that the Jews here addressed need to be convinced of the truth of Eleazar’s convictions. In short, on this understanding of the term, Eleazar’s words to his fellow-Jews are certainly paraenetic. 32  Troels Engberg-Pedersen notes the parallel to the “οὖν paraeneticum” (cf. Nauck, “Paräneticum,” 134–135): the transition to injunction from the setting forth of the theological argumentation that provides motivation and meaning (“Concept,” 62–64).

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But not necessarily on other understandings: for example, scholars who see “paraenesis” only where there is a collection of conventional precepts will hardly give our text a second glance. And – the point should be granted – the convenience of having “paraenesis” to designate such collections is lost once a more functional understanding of the term is adopted. But something is gained as well, as a comparison with the narrative about Eleazar in 2 Maccabees (6:18–31) makes clear. Much is the same – as one would expect, given that 2 Maccabees served as a source for our author. What is new and different in 4 Maccabees is precisely the extended articulation of the reasonableness of Jewish observance, and Eleazar’s direct appeal to his fellow-Jews to maintain such observance even if it costs them their lives. Thus, his speech as recorded in 4 Maccabees is illuminated when attention is paid to the ways in which it parallels other paraenetic texts; and what distinguishes this text from its parallel in 2 Maccabees is precisely its “paraenetic” character. 2. In the midst of his torments, the oldest brother addresses his siblings as follows: Imitate me, brothers. … Do not desert your post in my struggle, nor disown the brotherhood of good courage you share with me. Fight the sacred and noble fight for devotion to God. For such devotion’s sake the just Providence of our ancestors may become merciful to our nation and take vengeance on the accursed tyrant. (9:23–24)

Here we find a series of (logical) imperatives that are both concisely stated and benevolently meant. Unlike the disconnected injunctions of general ethical import that Dibelius found typical of “paraenesis,” these all amount to a single plea for appropriate moral conduct in a very particular situation: Die for the sake of devotion to God! The brothers’ common understanding of “devotion to God” implies their shared world view – the same world view that is articulated and defended throughout 4 Maccabees.33 The speech, then, may be seen as “paraenetic” on the proposed understanding, and the designation is surely as helpful here as it was for Eleazar’s speech. 3. A more dubious case is found in 13:9–18. There the brothers are said to have encouraged one another as follows: “Brothers, let us die like brothers for the sake of the law; let us imitate the three young men in Assyria who disdained the same civic rights accorded us – in a furnace! Let us not be cowardly in the demonstration of our devotion to God.” While one said, “Courage, brother,” another said, “Bear up nobly,” and another reminded them, “Remember whence you come and who the father was by whose hand Isaac 33  Admittedly, the brother makes no attempt to articulate the “shared world view” in his speech, and such an articulation is among the characteristics of paraenesis required by our working description. In a context where an extended articulation has just been offered, however, it seems legitimate to waive the requirement.



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submitted to be slaughtered for the sake of devotion to God.” Each of them and all of them together looked at one another, beaming and exceedingly bold, and said, “With our whole heart let us consecrate ourselves to the God who gave us our souls, and let us use our bodies as a bulwark for the law. Let us not fear him who thinks he is killing us, for great is the struggle of the soul and the peril of eternal torment awaiting those who transgress the commandment of God. Let us arm ourselves, then, with control of passion rooted in divine reason. For if we so die, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will receive us, and all our forefathers commend us.” To each of the brothers who were dragged away, those who remained said, “Do not shame us, brother, nor play false to those brothers who died before us!”

The passage is strewn with imperatives commending moral action, all benevolently intended, none anticipating disagreement, all reflective of a common world view. Do we, then, have paraenesis here? What we undoubtedly have are statements of mutual encouragement. Though there are obvious similarities, there are also distinctions that may be drawn between such statements and the earlier injunctions of Eleazar and the oldest brother before their deaths. For one thing, the latter communicated their directives to their listeners with a measure of authority lacking in the exchanges just quoted. In Eleazer’s case, the authority with which he commended faithfulness at all costs was apparent throughout the narrative: the authority he possessed in virtue of his age, of his office as priest, and even of his situation as one whose dying words might well be thought to impart wisdom.34 The authority of the oldest brother is less apparent; still, as the oldest brother, and as one who has proved his mettle through torture and whose death is imminent, he may be thought to command the attention of his younger siblings. The same cannot be said for the various speakers in our passage. At best, each might be thought to speak with the wisdom traditionally associated with the “last words” of the dying. But “authority” is a relational term: one has “authority” with respect to another or to others who, in the relevant regard, are less entitled, less informed, less experienced, or the like. Presumably, then, “last words” have authority only for people who are not themselves facing equally imminent death – and there are none of those in this audience. Note, too, that the various speeches are indifferently attributed to “one” or “another” of the brothers: at no point here is the “authority” of the speaker with respect to his audience in view. Yet some claim to authority appears inherent in the “paraenetic,” injunction-giving (or even advice-giving) situation: implicit in such a situation would seem to be the claim on the part of the speaker (or writer) to a status or wisdom or expertise that the one or ones addressed do not possess in equal measure.35 34  Perdue, in particular, notes that words of “paraenesis” are often attributed to the dying sage (“Death,” 81–109). 35  Cf. Popkes, Paränese, 24, 28–29. Starr, “Paraenesis,” notes that, as a consequence of the implicit claim to authority made by those who offer παραίνεσις and of the offence that

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It seems fair enough to reserve “paraenesis” for communications in which that condition is met. Among them we may reckon the speeches of Eleazar and the oldest brother, but not the succession of encouraging imperatives spoken by the brothers to each other. Whether the exclusion of the latter can be said to be based on the working description of “paraenesis” offered above will depend on whether the giving of an “injunction” (required by the proposed description) is itself felt to imply the authority of the injunction-giver (the description is not explicit on this point). 4. In 16:16–23, the mother addresses her sons as follows: O sons, noble is the struggle to which you have been summoned for the testimony you can bear for our nation. Fight willingly in defense of our ancestral law! For it would be shameful if, when this old man endures these agonies for the sake of devotion to God, you young men were terrified by the tortures. Remember that it is thanks to God that you have shared in the world and enjoyed life. Therefore you ought to endure all suffering for the sake of God, for whose sake our father Abraham made haste to sacrifice his son Isaac, a father of our nation; nor did Isaac flinch when he saw his father’s hand bearing a sword and descending upon him. Daniel the righteous was thrown to the lions. Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael were slung into a furnace of fire and, for the sake of God, endured. Since you have the same faith in God, be not distressed. For it would be unreasonable for those who know devotion to God not to withstand sufferings.

The author then sums up her speech: “By means of these words the mother of seven encouraged and persuaded each of her sons to die rather than transgress the commandment of God” (16:24). Is the speech paraenetic? Clearly, injunctions are given, concisely and benevolently, by a mother (who, as such, can speak authoritatively) to her sons. The explicit directives (“Fight willingly in defense of our ancestral law!” “Remember that it is thanks to God …”; “… be not distressed”) might be thought to lack the specific content of paraenetic counsel;36 in the context, however, it is apparent that they all represent circumlocutions of the directive given earlier in the text by Eleazar and repeated by the oldest brother (“Die nobly for devotion to God!”) – and it is so that the author, in his summative comment, construes them. Furthermore, the mother’s insuch a claim inevitably causes where it is not patently warranted, Plutarch (and others with the same diplomatic and rhetorical sensitivity) chose not to describe their own exhortations as paraenetic. 36  Troels Engberg-Pedersen, in commenting on an earlier draft of this paper, wondered whether one should not reserve “paraenesis” for texts with specific injunctions (arising out of a stated and comprehensive world view, etc.) and speak of texts as “hortatory” whose appeals are less clearly defined. The observation is based on his perception that παράκλησις is a broader term than παραίνεσις, that Latin exhortatio is the preferred rendering for παράκλησις, and that “hortatory,” derived from the Latin exhortatio, appropriately corresponds to παράκλησις /exhortatio.



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junction is certainly rooted in a world view that she shares with her sons, one to which she both alludes (“these agonies for the sake of devotion to God,” “you have the same faith in God,” “it would be unreasonable for those who know devotion to God”) and appeals (“Remember that it is thanks to God that you have shared in the world and enjoyed life”) throughout her speech. On the proposed understanding, then, the speech seems appropriately designated “paraenetic.” Is it usefully so designated? The label (understood as described) draws attention to the moral thrust at the core of the speech, to the world view that informs it, and to the allegiance to that world view shared in common by both speaker and those addressed – a shared foundation that allows the injunctions to be urged without requiring their justification. To that extent, it helpfully illuminates what is said. 5. The mother’s further speech in 18:7–19, however, is not paraenetic on this proposal – and for reasons that again suggest the proposal’s usefulness for discriminating between different types of moral appeal. Obviously, the mother here intends to influence her sons to show loyalty to Torah when she cites her own faithfulness and reminds them of how their father had taught them the Jewish scriptures. On the other hand, nowhere here does she plead with them directly to be faithful. At best, then, we might speak of the passage as “implicitly paraenetic”37 and discuss whether the same description can usefully be given to other passages where a specifiable moral intent appears likely even though it is not given explicit expression. But it hardly seems appropriate to speak of “paraenesis” where no “paraenesis” (injunction, advice) is actually given, where the movement from indicative to imperative is never made, where no direct appeal is made to the audience to think or act in a certain way. Some such formal requirement is surely needed if the term “paraensis” is not be be emptied of its designative value.38 Before we ask whether 4 Maccabees as a whole can be labeled “paraenetic,” the simple observation may be made that the presence within the 37 Or, perhaps, “paraenetic in intent” or “functionally paraenetic.” The adjective “paraenetic” would then be allowed a broader reference than that permitted the noun “paraenesis.” 38  See Gammie, “Literature,” 51: “Paraenesis is a form of address which not only commends, but actually enumerates precepts or maxims which pertain to moral aspiration and the regulation of human conduct” (author’s emphasis removed). Admittedly, precise boundaries may be hard to draw. The book of Proverbs, e. g., typically recommends behavior x, and the avoidance of behavior y, in two formally distinct ways. It can say simply, “Do x, for it will lead to consequence a; and do not do y, for it will lead to consequence b”; but the same point can be made by saying, “The righteous [or “the wise”] do x, and it leads them to consequence a, whereas the wicked [or “fools”] do y, and it leads them to consequence b.” Given that the two statements are formally distinct but virtually equivalent in force, the decision whether to apply a term like “paraenesis” to both will depend on whether one chooses to highlight form or force.

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book of speeches properly deemed “paraenetic” does not decide the issue. In principle, a “paraenetic” address spoken by a character in a story need not even represent the view of the author of the whole.39 Alternatively, a “paraenetic” moment in the course of a story may allow the author to give expression to admonitions deemed important (so, e. g., Tob 12:6–10), though the work as a whole has a different, non-paraenetic character.40 What, then, of 4 Maccabees? Is it, considered as a whole, “paraenesis”? Dibelius would say no. So must any who reserve the term for a “collection of precepts”41 – with whatever other qualifications they wish to add (that they are of general ethical import; that they are strung together without logical connection; that they are conventional in nature, claiming no originality; that they anticipate no contradiction, etc.). In 4 Maccabees (as we have seen), only a single verse (18:1) contains pertinent directives, and “Obey this law and show devotion to God in every way” hardly constitutes a “collection.” Leo Perdue, recognizing that the directives contained in “paraenesis” are based on a “previously shaped, comprehensive understanding of social reality,” finds that “paraenesis” itself represents the attempt to “provide general and practical guidance for human behavior within” that understanding. Here his understanding closely parallels that with which we have been working. He goes on to note, however, that the concrete guidance of paraenesis is typically offered to defined groups of people: those entering a new stage of life, a particular social role or group.42 Wiard Popkes, too, notes typical situations in which “paraenesis” is called for.43 These qualifications would not seem to be met in 4 Maccabees. The text calls Jews (without further delimitation) to commitment (at the most basic level) to a Jewish way of life. It provides the reader with no explicit directives for

39 When, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius addresses his son Laertes before the latter departs for France (Act 1, Scene 3, 55–81), the speech is “paraenetic” on a number of definitions; but it is not at all clear that Polonius represents Shakespeare’s own views nor (for a variety of reasons) can Hamlet as a whole be labeled “paraenetic.” 40  Tobit is an edifying tale. It lacks admonitions given directly to the reader by the author, however, and these, as I have suggested above, are surely a necessary component of “paraenesis.” Without such a requirement, any tale (or even novel) deemed to have a moral point, or to be told in such a way that a moral perspective is communicated, is a candidate for “paraenesis” – and the risk of the label’s losing its designative value looms large. 41  So, e. g., Rudolf Vetschera, in a definition adopted by Fiore, “Parenesis,” 163: “a literary work which by its structure and aim delineates a collection of precepts which relate unexceptionally to the practical conduct of life, indeed to promote it, as far as it can, and to lead to virtue.” See also Gammie, “Literature,” 55. 42  Perdue, “Character,” 6, 19–23. 43 Popkes, Paränese, 26.



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practicing such a way of life in particular situations,44 or by a particular group, or by those playing a particular role in the community. In short, many discuss “paraenesis” in terms that bear no obvious relation to what we find in 4 Maccabees. But what of the proposed understanding of “paraenesis” under consideration here? The proposal requires (reasonably, as I have argued) the presence of an explicit injunction that “reminds of moral practices to be pursued or avoided.” The only possible candidate, as noted above, is 18:1–2; apart from pleas for attention to what is said, it is only in these verses that readers are explicitly told what to do. We need not labor the obvious point that the injunctions given there are both “concise” and “benevolent.” Some mention should perhaps be made of the issue raised above whether the giver of paraenetic injunctions needs to be – and whether in this case he is – a figure of “authority”; to this we will return. The prime issue, however, in light of the preceding discussion, is whether the directives “Obey this law and show devotion to God in every way” are specific enough to be labeled “paraenetic” rather than (more broadly) “hortatory” (or some such term). Beyond that, we need also to establish whether the injunctions are expressed in a context where both the one giving and those receiving them share a common and articulated world view, so that no disagreement is anticipated. On the latter issue, there can be no doubt: the author of 4 Maccabees manifestly presupposes that his readers share his Jewish convictions about the nature of ultimate reality. That does not prevent him from defending these convictions at length; on the contrary, much of the book – both in the speeches given (primarily that of Eleazar) and in authorial commentary – is devoted to a demonstration of the reasonableness of an observant Jewish lifestyle (or, as the author labels it, “our philosophy” [5:22]). The terms in which he frames his argument – that the Jewish law enables its practitioners to overcome their passions through reason and inculcates in them the virtues to which even Gentile moralists aspire – may or may not have been novel for his readers. Nonetheless, the author’s intention is scarcely to persuade unconvinced Jews of the value of observing the Jewish law; rather, he means to strengthen the resolve of his fellow-Jews to maintain their observance in the face of temptations – ever present, particularly in a Diaspora community – to laxity.45 In that sense, the whole book may fairly be said to lead up to, and to support, the injunctions in 18:1–2; the whole book articulates 44  At

least, not directly. It is true that particular laws are cited, especially in chapter 2, as means by which the passions can be conquered by reason. And adherence to the food laws is highlighted throughout the book, together with the famous observation that transgression of the law “in matters small or great is of equal seriousness” (5:20–21). We will return to the nature and implications of the author’s explicit directive (18:1–2) below. 45  Thurén (Argument, 226–227) notes that the primary task of a paraenetic text is

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abundantly the world view in which these verses are rooted. If, then, the injunctions themselves are “paraenetic,” the whole book may fairly be labeled a “paraenetic” address.46 If not, we must be content to note the author’s (broadly) “hortatory” purpose. A “paraenetic” understanding of the directives might be challenged on at least two grounds.47 1. If the point of these verses is simply that readers “are being told or commanded to do the law, then there seems to be little room for paraenesis proper.”48 “Paraenesis,” from this perspective, requires that the injunctions given are not simply commanded, but rather commanded as reasonable; that is, as consistent with the world view on which the giver and the recipients of the injunctions are in agreement. The distinction is certainly an important one, but it is not one that can challenge the entitlement of 4 Maccabees to be considered “paraenetic”: as we have seen, the book places great emphasis on the reasonableness of complying with Jewish law. 2. But are the injunctions specific enough to be labeled “paraenetic” rather than simply “hortatory”? Is the book commending particular moral practices or simply encouraging faithfulness in the broadest of senses? A clearcut answer, I suggest, cannot be given. The actual terms of the directives are very general indeed – “Obey this law and show devotion to God in every way” – and, taken by themselves, would have to be considered hortatory rather than paraenetic (as the terms are distinguished here). On the other hand, it can, I think, fairly be claimed that the author, in spite of the generality with which he speaks, has a few very specific prescriptions of the law in mind when he enjoins its obedience; and, moreover, that his readers would have been fully alert to his intentions. At issue, when the author commends obedience to the law and devotion to God, is scarcely the law’s prohibition of murder or its demand to love one’s neighbor as oneself. The moral choice facing the martyrs in the stories was whether they would be faithful to the laws that distinguished Jews from others by

not to convince, but to motivate an audience to adhere to the way of life that they have already adopted. 46  Note that, although Malherbe finds “paraenetic features” throughout 1 Thessalonians, and designates the letter as a whole “paraenetic,” he nonetheless finds it convenient to distinguish the autobiographical from the “properly paraenetic sections” of 1 Thessalonians (Thessalonians, 80–85). Similarly, Thurén refers to 1 Pet 4:7–11 as a “formally genuine paraenesis” in the course of a study that otherwise views the entire epistle as an example of early Christian “paraenesis” (Argument, 169, 226–227). 47  Both were raised by Troels Engberg-Pedersen in his review of the initial draft of this paper. 48  The wording is that of Engberg-Pedersen.



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abstaining from certain foods.49 Assimilation to Gentile ways – as the path to acceptance and success in society at large – is undoubtedly the specific temptation facing the readers of 4 Maccabees and that against which our author is attempting to strengthen their resolve.50 If we are prepared to acknowledge that the author’s plea to obey the Jewish law and show devotion to God in fact amounts to an appeal to maintain faithfulness to the specific laws that distinguished Jews from Gentiles, then it seems not inappropriate to label the appeal “paraenetic.” Does 4 Maccabees represent the address of a “person of authority”? As noted in our overview of the work, at no point in the text is attention explicitly drawn to any authority, or basis for authority, that the author is presumed to possess for his readers. On the other hand, we may well perceive in the tone of the whole (and particularly in that of the opening verses) the self-assurance of a speaker philosophically trained who is addressing those less exposed to philosophy in order to inform them on a topic believed essential to their well-being. That, it seems to me, is “authority” enough for our purposes. In the end, then, it must be said that the question whether 4 Maccabees represents a “paraenetic” address is not completely resolved even when the term is given the precise description proposed by the Paraenesis Project. Nonetheless, the description highlights issues and features important to an understanding of the text and in the end – to my mind, at least – provides us with sufficient grounds for including 4 Maccabees under the rubric. We have noted in particular that the consideration of 4 Maccabees as paraenetic helpfully distinguishes it from the non-paraenetic character of the otherwise similar narrative of 2 Maccabees. In our final section, we will see that it allows us to observe interesting parallels with, and differences from, the paraenetic material in the Pauline epistles.

49  Perhaps I should add that it does not follow without further ado that our author should be ranked with those who neglected the “weightier matters of the law” in his zeal for (seemingly) trivial pursuits. He himself was quite prepared to distinguish between the relative significance of different laws, though he would not allow the pettiness of any transgression of the divine law (5:20–21). The point is simply that he saw the most immediate threat to Jewish faithfulness to God in the temptation to adopt a Gentile lifestyle. 50  This is, of course, the point of his insistence on the perils of transgressing even commandments deemed insignificant (5:19–21).

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Four Maccabees and Pauline Paraenesis Presupposed in any “paraenetic” situation is the common sharing of basic convictions by the one advising and those advised: otherwise, persuasion on a more fundamental level is called for.51 The subject matter of the paraenetic injunction is thus the ethical ramifications of the (undisputed) underlying convictions, not the convictions themselves. Yet, according to our working description of “paraenesis,” agreement is expected on the propriety of what is enjoined as well: the paraenesis serves merely to remind of what constitutes appropriate, or inappropriate, moral behavior. Where neither the substance of the counsel given nor the world view that underlies it are in question, we might well question why either or both need articulation: is not “paraenesis,” defined in these terms, a superfluous exercise? Paraenesis can only have a point where the ethical implications of commonly held convictions are perceived by the adviser to be only rudimentarily discerned or (at least in danger of being) inconsistently observed by the party to be advised.52 Stoic paraenesis recognized that the ultimate good could be grasped by those who nonetheless remained uncertain what conduct in particular situations was most in keeping with that good; paraenetic injunctions addressed that need.53 In the Pauline epistles, too, “reminders” of obligations earlier communicated or already perceived are so interwoven with directives that appear to have been informative (some, indeed, offered in response to his readers’ inquiries) that it seems pedantic to label “paraenetic” only the former type of injunction. In short, one should not interpret the “reminding” character of paraenesis too rigidly. But even where paraenetic injunctions are in no way informative, it does not follow that they are superfluous. Agreement with the proposition that we should not give way to anger or greed by no means puts an end to temptations to do so: reason (as the author of 4 Maccabees was neither the first nor the last to point out) must still contend with the passions. Hence, reminders of the need to do what all recognize as the right thing to be done may be very much in order. Why, then, recall first principles, the underlying world view on which the directives are based? Doubtless the point is to give weight to the directives

51 Note that Stowers (Letter Writing, 92) distinguishes “paraenesis” from “protreptic” along these lines. The point is also, of course, included in the understanding of “paraenesis” proposed by the Paraenesis Project. 52 Often, of course, the adviser faces temptations no different from those of the advised, but offers counsel as the more experienced party. 53  The point is discussed at length in Engberg-Pedersen, “Concept,” with particular reference to Seneca’s Epistles 94 and 95.



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and to motivate their obedience. So much may be said of any situation in which advice is given. The “paraenetic” situation becomes more complicated, however, where the fundamental convictions shared by the adviser and the advised are not held by the majority of those among whom they live. Here the stability of the convictions themselves, and not simply the practice of their ethical implications, is subject to constant temptation. In this respect, the author of 4 Maccabees and the apostle Paul – and early Jewish and Christian moralists in general – find themselves in the same “paraenetic” predicament. (The similarities go further to include their common allegiance to a number of the same basic, but countercultural, convictions.) We conclude by noting briefly a few points of comparison on the ways in which they address it. 1. In addressing their “paraenetic” concerns to likeminded people, both Paul and the author of 4 Maccabees insist on the universal scope of the convictions that underlie their appeals. What they are advancing is therefore, in its intentions, a true “world view,” an encompassing vision of reality, and not (what appearances might suggest) parochial instruction for a minority community. For the author of 4 Maccabees, Torah has been given by the Creator to guide human reason in its struggle with the passions (2:21–23; cf. 11:5); he can speak of the one who “adopts a way of life in accordance with the law” as pursuing an option apparently open to all (2:8; cf. 2:23).54 It is in any case those who take this path who overcome their passions as humans were meant to do, and who live in accordance with nature. For his part, Paul may in certain texts distinguish between Jews who are “under the law” and Gentiles who are not (Rom 2:12; 1 Cor 9:20–21). But when he comes to state what is fundamentally required of human beings, no differentiation is allowed: the Creator is due honor and thanks from all (Rom 1:21); all are to do what is “good” and avoid “evil” (2:6–11) – and Gentiles no less than Jews are said to have sufficient awareness of the required goodness to account for their occasional compliance and to render their non-compliance culpable (1:18–23, 32; 2:14–15). The Jewish law in this regard merely spells out the responsibilities of all, enabling Jews (who have the law) to instruct Gentiles (who do not) on their common obligations (2:17–29). Not only, for Paul, are basic human responsibilities universal. So, too, is human sinfulness (3:22–23) – and so is the divine solution to the dilemma: whoever 54 On the other hand, since Eleazar identifies himself with those who have been “persuaded to adopt a way of life in accordance with divine law” (5:16), it is possible that he thinks only of his fellow-Jews as those who have done so. In any case, the option open to a Gentile is to become a Jew, for the author has no doubt that the law to be conformed with is that of the Jews (see 1:33–34; 5:18, 33; 6:21).

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calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (10:13; cf. 1:16). Those who do so are thus alive, not only to the reality of the (universal) human plight, but also to the cosmic change brought about by God’s salvific initiative (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15); they are thus urged to live – herein lies the substance of the Pauline paraenesis – in a way “worthy” of their transformed existence as the people of God (Phil 1:27; 1 Thess 2:12, etc.). Admittedly, whereas Paul understands himself to be commissioned to proclaim his faith to the Gentiles and does whatever he can in order that he “might by all means save some” (1 Cor 9:16, 22; cf. Rom 15:15–21; Gal 1:16), the author of 4 Maccabees shows no interest in gaining Gentile adherents for Torah. The point here is simply that the paraenesis of both 4 Maccabees and the Pauline epistles, though directed to particular and, to some degree, beleaguered communities, is given shape within the framework of an articulated world view. 2. At the same time, the awareness of both Paul and the author of 4 Maccabees that their basic convictions are embraced by few means that they can allow others to have grasped the truth only imperfectly. In advancing a thesis that echoes a broad tradition of moral thought, the author of 4 Maccabees may well be thought to go further than Paul in allowing Gentiles a partial perception of the truth: what they need to realize is that Torah is the divinely appointed means for overcoming the passions. Paul, by way of contrast, can (in some contexts, at least) categorically reject earthly “wisdom”: the world by its wisdom did not know God; and God, through the gospel, has made foolish all earthly pretensions of wisdom (1 Cor 1:18–21; see also Rom 1:18–23, 28).55 Still, when the author of 4 Maccabees insists that the passions are overcome only by Jews trained in the law (9:18), he is no less exclusive than Paul, for whom salvation is only to be found among those who believe the gospel (1 Cor 1:18, 21). 3. Living in a society where the distinctive elements of their truth claims are little heeded, both the author of 4 Maccabees and Paul find it important to insist on the ultimate vindication of these claims and on the reward that will one day be granted those who uphold them in their daily lives. Such insistence plays a significant role in their “paraenetic” appeals. 4. In 4 Maccabees, the explicit substance of the paraenesis does not go beyond the plea to obey the law and show devotion to God “in every way” (18:1): what obedience to the law would practically entail is not spelled out – though, to be sure, particular laws are mentioned at various points, and, as we have seen, the focus of the appeal appears to be the observance of 55  We will see below that this is not all that is to be said about the Gentile world – even for Paul.



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(well-known) laws that separated Jews from Gentiles. Paul, on the other hand, devotes considerable energy to working out the ethical implications of Christian faith. The difference may in part be occasional. Paul often wrote in response to inquiries about particular ethical issues, or to news about irregular behavior on the part of his converts. By way of contrast, the author of 4 Maccabees no doubt sensed that what his audience most immediately needed was a simple call for loyalty to laws whose content was familiar. It is also, of course, true that Paul, though able to draw to some extent on ethical material that was already “traditional” in Christian communities, was frequently a pioneer in exploring the ethical implications of Christian belief; the author of 4 Maccabees had many predecessors, and could assume that his Jewish readers had been brought up to know what a faithful Jew should and should not do. 5. For the author of 4 Maccabees, the goal (or at least a goal) of Torah observance was the cultivation of the cardinal virtues and the rule of reason over the passions: such formulations corresponded to pagan aspirations. Still, the path prescribed by Torah entailed observance of a number of laws that distinguished Jews from their non-Jewish neighbors: the food laws, in particular, are frequently mentioned, and seem at the center of the author’s concerns. On the whole, the goals that Paul enumerates to motivate the ethical behavior of his converts are rooted squarely in Christian convictions, and he makes much less of an attempt at formulating the appeals themselves in terms that would resonate with pagan readers.56 In this respect, the author of 4 Maccabees seems better attuned to the broader culture in which he lived. Somewhat paradoxically, however, those who lived in conformity with Paul’s “paraenesis” would stand out from their pagan neighbors in nowhere near as pronounced a way as Jews who followed the (more culturally attuned) “paraenesis” of 4 Maccabees.57 Still, Paul, too, imposed limits that inevitably set his converts apart from their non-Christian (and non-Jewish) neighbors. Paul’s converts were not 56  See Barclay, Diaspora, 387–392; also “Anomaly,” 89–120.  – There are, of course, exceptions, Phil 4:8 being perhaps the best known. Note, too, that Paul can speak of the object of Jewish, Gentile, and Christian moral behavior as in each case involving the doing (or pursuit) of the “good” (without further definition) and the avoidance of “evil” (again, without further definition) (Rom 2:6–10; 12:9; 16:19, etc.).Clearly, he believes that fundamental moral perceptions are shared by all (cf. Rom 1:32; 2:14–15; 12:17; 2 Cor 8:21). 57  This is not to deny the distinctiveness of a life lived (as Paul summons his converts to live) in imitation of a crucified Lord, in selfless love and service of others. But the distinctiveness of those who restrict themselves in what, and with whom, they eat and on what days they show up for work is nonetheless more likely to attract the immediate attention of their neighbors.

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to be tied to Jewish observances; he did, however, think that they should not exercise such “freedom” if flaunting it would offend (in some cases Jewish) fellow-Christians (Rom 14:13–23). It is also clear that, in matters of sexual morality, Paul expected his converts to live up to ideals shared by Jews but not (as a general rule) by Gentile society (see 1 Thess 4:3–8). What above all, however, would draw attention to Paul’s converts (and other Christians) and mark them (like the Jews) as a “separate people” was the necessity of avoiding explicit involvement in Gentile idolatry (1 Cor 10:14–22, 28; 2 Cor 6:16–18). In this essential implication of Christian faith lay the potential for provoking their non-believing neighbors to ire and persecution not unlike that to which Jews (as 4 Maccabees reminds us) had long been exposed. Bibliography Anderson, H. “4 Maccabees.” In Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 2, edited by James H. Charlesworth. New York: Doubleday, 1985, 531–564. Barclay, John M. G. Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE – 117 CE). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. – “Paul Among Diaspora Jews: Anomaly or Apostate?” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 60 (1995): 89–120. Bickerman, Elias J. Studies in Jewish and Christian History, Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 1976. Breitenstein, Urs. Beobachtungen zu Sprache, Stil und Gedankengut des Vierten Makkabäerbuchs. Basel: Schwabe, 1976. Collins, John J. Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora. New York: Crossroad, 1986. DeSilva, David A. 4 Maccabees. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998 Dupont-Sommer, André : Le quatrième livre des Machabées. Paris: Libraire Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1939. Engberg-Pedersen, Troels. “The Concept of Paraenesis.” In Early Christian Paraenesis in Context, edited by James Starr and Troels Engberg-Pedersen. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004, 47–72. Fiore, Benjamin. “Parenesis and Protreptic.” In Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 5, edited by David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992, 162–165. Gammie, John G. “Paraenetic Literature: Toward the Morphology of a Secondary Genre.” Semeia 50 (1990): 41–77. Hadas, Moses. The Third and Fourth Books of Maccabees. New York: Harper, 1953. Kennedy, George A. New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Klauck, Hans-Josef. 4 Makkabäerbuch. Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1989. Malherbe, Abraham J. “Hellenistic Moralists and the New Testament.” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 26.1, Part 2, edited by Wolfgang Hasse and Hildegard Temporini. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1992, 267–333. – The Letters to the Thessalonians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York: Doubleday, 2000.



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Nauck, Wolfgang. “Das oun-paräneticum.” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 49 (1958): 134–135. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. Gesetz und Paränese: katechismusartige Weisungsreihen in der frühjüdischen Literatur. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1987. Norden, Eduard. Die antike Kunstprosa vom VI. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis in die Zeit der Renaissance, Vol. 1. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1958. O’Hagan, Angelo. “The Martyr in the Fourth Book of Maccabees.” Studii biblici Franciscani liber annus 24 (1974): 94–120. Perdue, Leo G. “The Death of the Sage and Moral Exhortation: From Ancient Near Eastern Instructions to Graeco-Roman Paraenesis.” Semeia 50 (1990): 81–109. – “The Social Character of Paraenesis and Paraenetic Literature.” Semeia 50 (1990): 5–39. Popkes, Wiard. Paränese und Neues Testament. Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1996. Rahlfs, Alfred, editor. Septuaginta. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1935. Renehan, Robert. “The Greek Philosophic Background of Fourth Maccabees.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie N. F. 115 (1972): 223–238. Starr, James M. “Was Paraenesis for Beginners?” In Early Christian Paraenesis in Context, edited by James Starr and Troels Engberg-Pedersen. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004, 73–111. Stowers, Stanley K. Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986. Thurén, Lauri. Argument and Theology in 1 Peter: The Origins of Christian Paraenesis. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995.

Chapter 6

Law in the New Testament In the New Testament, law refers primarily to the sum of commandments given to Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai, or to the part of Scripture – the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) – that contains them.1 Occasionally, the term is extended to include the whole of the Jewish sacred scriptures (see John 10:34; 12:34; 15:25; Rom 3:19; 1 Cor 14:21). Torah, the equivalent Hebrew term, is used below interchangeably with law in each of these senses. Jesus and his earliest followers read the sacred scriptures of the Jews, including the law (or Pentateuch), as illuminating and authoritative words from God. Scripture both shaped and (they insisted) supported their basic convictions: “the law and the prophets” found their fulfillment in Christ (see Matt 5:17; Luke 24:27, 44) and bore witness to righteousness through faith (Rom 3:21). Scripture was written, they believed, for their instruction (Rom 15:4; 1 Cor 10:1–12; cf. 9:10). More problematic, however, was the Mosaic law code. Though contemporary Judaism was (largely, at least) Torah-centric, Torah was not the primary focus either of Jesus’ proclamation of the inbreaking kingdom of God (Mark 1:14–15; Matt 4:17; 10:7; Luke 10:9–11) or of the post-Easter message of the early church, with its focus on Messiah’s death, resurrection, and pending return. How, then, were followers of Jesus to relate to the law? How did God’s recent redemptive work in Christ relate to God’s earlier legislative activity through Moses? Were followers of Christ still bound by Moses’ laws? This last issue was brought to a head as the Jesus movement spread to include non-Jews who were not circumcised, who had never observed Jewish sabbaths and festivals, and who routinely ate foods forbidden to Jews. Were Gentile Christians – or, indeed, all Christians – free to dispense with divine commandments in these areas? And if they were, what purpose could God have had in mind in giving commandments now deemed dispensable?

1 

Biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version.

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The Gospels and Acts 1. Mark. As the herald of the kingdom (1:14–15), God’s beloved Son (1:1, 11; 9:7), the awaited Messiah (8:29), and the “Son of Man” with “authority on earth” (2:10), Jesus appears in Mark’s gospel as the fulcrum of God’s activity, the one through whom the kingdom of God is inaugurated. It follows that one’s response to Jesus and his message becomes the decisive mark of obedience toward God (9:37): people are summoned to “believe in the good news” (1:15), to “follow” Jesus (1:17–18, 20; 2:14; 8:34; 10:21, 28–30), to give heed to his words (4:3, 9, 23–25; 9:7; see 13:31), to believe in him (9:42), to be prepared to lose their lives for his sake (8:35; 13:9, 12–13). For his part, as Jesus assumes the divine prerogative of pronouncing the forgiveness of sins (2:3–12), so he exercises sovereign freedom in interpreting the will of God and relating it to Torah. Acting as “lord even of the sabbath” (2:28), Jesus insists that consideration of the purpose underlying the Sabbath may override the law’s prohibition of work on that day (2:23–27). He justifies a Sabbath healing on the principle that doing good must be lawful even on the statutory day of rest (3:1–5). Though whole chapters of Pentateuchal legislation distinguish between “clean” and “unclean” foods, Jesus is said to have “declared all foods clean” when he claimed that nothing entering a person from outside can cause defilement (7:14–19; see Rom 14:14). The “commandment” of Moses prescribing proper procedure for a divorce is dismissed as a concession to human hardheartedness; instead, Jesus finds the will of God in the declaration of Genesis 2:24 that a husband and wife become “one flesh”: “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Mark 10:2–9). To those offended by his apparent disregard for contemporary standards of piety, Jesus replies that new wine cannot be contained in old wineskins (2:18–22). In other cases, however, the Markan Jesus no less sovereignly upholds the law. He cites the demand to honor one’s parents (Exod 20:12) as the “commandment” (Mark 7:9–10) or “word of God” (7:13), accusing Pharisees and scribes of abandoning it while maintaining “human tradition” (7:6–13). When a wealthy man asks Jesus what he must “do to inherit eternal life,” Jesus points him in the first place to the ten commandments before bidding the man to leave his wealth to the poor and follow him (10:17–22). Of a scribe who agrees that the commandments to love God and one’s neighbor are the greatest in the law and far more important than “all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices,” Jesus observes that he is “not far from the kingdom of God” (12:28–34). This last exchange, together with the controversies related to Sabbath and purity laws, certainly suggests a prioritizing of ethical over “ceremonial” or “ritual” commandments of the law (note already Hos 6:6; Mic 6:6–8); but Mark’s Gospel never articulates such a rule of thumb.



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What is important for Mark is that Jesus – whether interpreting (2:23–3:5), setting aside (7:14–19; 10:4–5), or affirming (7:7–13; 10:17–22) provisions of Mosaic law – remains the sovereign interpreter of God’s will. 2. Matthew. Whereas the Gospel of Mark was written for readers unfamiliar with Jewish laws and customs (note the need for explanation in Mark 7:3–4), the Gospel of Matthew was written in the context of a Jewish-Christian community living side-by-side with Jews unconvinced by claims of Jesus’ messiahship. Here issues related to the law arose daily. It is thus not surprising that Matthew’s Gospel exhibits far more concern for the place and proper understanding of the Mosaic law than any other Gospel. Four emphases characterize Matthew’s references to the law. i. Fulfillment of the law. The coming of Jesus marks a decisive new stage in God’s dealings with the Jewish people, the climax and fulfillment of all that preceded it. Matthew maintains Mark’s presentation of Jesus as the fulcrum of God’s activity, and a positive response to Jesus and his message is seen as the decisive mark of obedience toward God (10:40). Here, too, we find calls to follow Jesus (4:18–22; 9:9; 16:24; 19:21, 27–29; note also 8:19–22), to heed his words (7:24–27; 13:3, 9; 24:35; 28:20), indeed, to place loyalty to Jesus above all other loyalties (10:22, 37–39; 16:24–25). Jesus’ invitation to take up his “yoke” (11:29) echoes as it transforms Jewish references to the “yoke of the law.” What Matthew stresses to a far greater extent than Mark is that the activities of Jesus represent the climax of all God’s earlier dealings with the Jewish people, including the giving of the law. Jesus came to “fulfill” the “law and the prophets” (5:17). The period in which the “prophets and the law prophesied” was one of anticipation, lasting until the coming of John (the Baptist); the period that succeeds it is marked by the presence of God’s kingdom (11:12–13; see also 11:2–5; 13:16–17). ii. Higher righteousness. Followers of Jesus are not exempt from the demand for righteous behavior on which the Mosaic law is based; rather, they are summoned, through the interpretations and pronouncements of Jesus, to a higher righteousness (5:17–20). Here, again, much that was said about Mark can be repeated. The distinctive nuances of Matthew’s presentation, however, merit attention, though in several cases their interpretation is disputed. In Matthew as in Mark, the Sabbath activities of Jesus and his disciples spark controversy (12:1–14), and Matthew repeats the claims that “the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath” (v. 8) and that it is “lawful to do good on the sabbath” (v. 12). Whether other, distinctively Matthean features in these pericopes are intended to make the actions of Jesus and his disciples appear defensible by the standards of the law is uncertain.

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Thus, Matthew (but not Mark) indicates that Jesus’ “disciples were hungry” when they plucked heads of grain on the Sabbath (12:1). Is the need to satisfy hunger thought to provide legal justification for their Sabbath “work,” or does Matthew simply want to underline the parallel with David (“when he and his companions were hungry,” v. 3), who is explicitly said to have eaten food that “was not lawful for him or his companions to eat” (v. 4)? In Matthew (but not Mark), Jesus cites a further example from Scripture in defense of his disciples’ activity: priests are allowed to “break the sabbath” by carrying on their work in the temple (12:5). Is the example meant as a precedent, recognized by the law, that legitimates what Jesus’ disciples have done, or to suggest that the niceties of the law must give way to the presence of “something greater than the temple” (v. 6)? The citation of Hosea 6:6 (Matt 12:7; also 9:13) indicates that humanitarian concerns must take priority over laws of cultic (or, in this case, Sabbath) observance (see also 12:11–12). Mark has no corresponding quotation, though the same point (also attested in later rabbinic writings) is implicit in Mark 12:28–34. In Matthew as in Mark, Jesus accuses the “Pharisees and scribes” of breaking God’s commands to uphold their own traditions (15:1–9). The declaration that only what comes from the heart, not what enters the mouth, can defile a person (15:11, 17–20) clearly indicates (again) the priority of ethical over ritual commandments (see also 23:23–24). Whether in Matthew it actually sets aside the food laws of Torah is disputed. That it does is suggested by the matter-of-fact explanation given in verse 17 for why nothing entering the mouth can bring defilement, as well as by the metaphorical language of 23:26, which seems to imply that “internal” purity is the only purity that matters. On the other hand, Matthew 5:18–19 appears to rule out the notion that commands of Torah can be invalidated. Moreover, Matthew lacks Mark’s declaration that Jesus made “all foods clean” (contrast Mark 7:19); only Pharisaic traditions of handwashing are explicitly discounted (15:20). In the discussion of divorce (19:3–9), any suggestion that Jesus opposes Moses is ruled out by Matthew: what Jesus sets aside is a mere concession that Moses “allowed,” not a procedure that Moses “commanded” (19:8; contrast Mark 10:3, 5); and when Jesus allows that a man who divorces his wife because of her “unchastity” is himself guiltless (Matt 5:32; 19:9), the exception may itself represent an interpretation of the words “something objectionable [or “indecent”]” in Deuteronomy 24.1. Finally, when the Matthean Jesus condemns the zeal shown by “scribes and Pharisees” for tithing herbs (“mint, dill, and cummin”) while neglecting “the weightier matters of the law,” he explains that the problem lies with



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their neglect of the latter (“these you ought to have practiced”), not their zeal for the former (“without neglecting the others”) (23:23). iii. Continuity between Moses and Jesus. Matthew exhibits a concern (not apparent in Mark) to show that Jesus does not undercut the law of Moses. The law remains a valid statement of God’s will, though Jesus is its true interpreter, and his words represent the decisive articulation of God’s demands. Six times in Matthew 5:21–48, Matthew juxtaposes quotations from Torah with the words of Jesus, clearly implying that it is the latter that must be heeded (see also 7:24–27; 28:20). In the first two instances, Jesus’ words may be construed as a kind of “internalizing” interpretation of the terms of Torah itself: the law that prohibits murder must be understood to forbid expressions of anger and belittlement as well (5:21–22); the prohibition of adultery must be taken as excluding the lustful gaze (vv. 27–28). In the case of divorce (vv. 31–32), oaths (vv. 33–37), and revenge (vv. 38–42), however, Jesus treats the terms of Torah as concessions to human sinfulness that have no place in the behavior of those who would participate in God’s kingdom. And though Torah’s commandment to love one’s “neighbor” might seem to allow a quite different stance toward one’s enemy (“and hate your enemy”), Jesus requires of those who would be children of the Father in heaven that they exhibit the Father’s love even in these cases (vv. 43–48). When, then, in the introduction to the antitheses, Jesus is said to “fulfill” the law (5:17), the point must be that he brings to perfect expression the requirement of righteous behavior on which the Mosaic law is based. iv. Love of God and neighbor. As in Mark, so the Jesus of Matthew identifies the imperatives of love for God and love for one’s neighbor as the greatest commandments (22:34–40). In Matthew, Jesus adds, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (22:40; see 7:12). Love is thus identified as the goal of all the commandments; its demands must therefore steer their interpretation and application in each situation. 3. Luke-Acts. Again, discussion of the law in Luke-Acts may be conducted under four headings. i. Jesus’ authority. Jesus’ authority to interpret the will of God and relate it to Torah is as fundamental in Luke as it is in Mark and Matthew. In addition to Jesus’ authoritative proclamation of the kingdom of God and its ethics (e. g., 6:20–49; 12:22–53), we may note that Luke retains the two Sabbath controversies in Mark 2:23–3:6 (Luke 6:1–11), illustrating the “lordship” of the “Son of Man” over the Sabbath (6:5). The handwashing controversy of Mark 7:1–23; Matthew 15:1–20 is not in Luke; in its place, however, is a scene in which the consternation provoked by Jesus’ own failure to wash before dining leads him to attack Pharisaic scruples about external purity and indifference toward purity of the heart (11:39). A clean

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inside (reflected in the willingness to give alms) is said to be all that matters (11:40–41; cf. Matt 23:25–26). If the implications of these verses are pressed, there appears to be no point in observing the food laws or regulations of ritual purity in the Mosaic code. Such a conclusion seems consistent with Jesus’ blanket charge to followers sent on a mission to “eat what is set befor you” (10:7–8). The point is not, however, made explicit. Jesus summarizes his teaching on divorce in Luke 16:18, though without relating it to the Mosaic law (contrast Mark 10:2–9; Matt 19:3–9). In Luke 10:29–37, Jesus provides a memorable interpretation of the word “neighbor” in the love commandment of Leviticus 19:18 by telling the story of the “good Samaritan.” ii. Ethical behavior. Priority is assigned to ethical over ritual commandments, to an extent that leaves the status of the latter in doubt. As noted above, Luke 11:40–41 suggests that the only purity that matters is that of the heart. Jesus goes on to juxtapose the punctiliousness of Pharisees in tithing herbs with their neglect of the ethical demands of the law (“justice and the love of God” [11:42]). Though he does not fault their tithing as such, the contrast in chapter 18 between the Pharisee who boasts of (among other things) his scrupulous tithing and the tax-collector who appeals only to God’s mercy is drawn in such a way that the importance of the Pharisee’s practice is again discounted: the tax-collector, not the Pharisee, is “justified” (18:9–14). In two accounts of Sabbath healings unique to Luke (13:10–17; 14:1–6), the humanitarian considerations (similar to those expressed in Matt 12:11–12) urged by Jesus silence those critical of his disregard for Sabbath laws. iii. Continutity between Moses and Jesus. There is a sense, in Luke as in Mark and Matthew, in which the period of the law and the prophets has given way to that of the kingdom of God (16:16): a new and decisive stage in salvation history has begun. Yet Luke is as anxious as Matthew to maintain continuity between Moses and Jesus: “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one stroke of a letter in the law to be dropped” (16:17). In part, the continuity lies in the way Jesus represents the fulfillment of prophecies found in the books of Moses, as in other scriptures (24:27, 44; see Acts 3:22–23; 7:37; 26:22–23; 28:23). In part, the love commandments, seen as the summation of the law’s requirements, provide a pivotal point of continuity (cf. 10:25–28). But Luke also believes that the God whose kingdom Jesus proclaims is the same God whose law was given to Moses. Hence, any who are truly submissive to God’s law will be open to the coming of the kingdom (note Luke’s stress on the faithfulness to the law shown by those who pave the way for the dawn of the kingdom, 1:6, 59; 2:21–24, 27, 39, 41; see also 23:56), and Jesus does not hesitate to direct inquirers in the first place to the (moral) commandments of the law (10:25–28;



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18:18–20); conversely, not even a display of the kingdom’s power will create faith in those who refuse to heed Moses and the prophets (16:27–31). iv. Acts. The Acts of the Apostles echoes the Pauline theme that salvation and the forgiveness of sins are available, for Jews and non-Jews alike, only through faith in Jesus Christ (2:38; 4:12; 5:31; 10:43; 15:11; 16:31, etc.). It follows that they cannot be achieved through the law of Moses (13:39; 15:10) and, hence, that there is no need to impose its commands on nonJews to whom they are unfamiliar. Sufficient for them if they avoid the items listed in the “apostolic decree” (15:10, 19–21, 28–29; 21:25). On the other hand, Jewish Christians are consistently portrayed in Acts as faithful to Jewish law and custom (18:18; 20:16; 21:23–24, 26; 22:12; 24:17–18; 25:8; 28:17); indeed, some prove reluctant – until compelled by unmistakable evidence of the divine will – to approve Peter’s association with Gentiles (10:9–16, 28–29, 44–11:18). In this regard, Acts faithfully portrays the practice of many Jewish Christians in the early period (see 21:20). Acts 16:3 suggests that Paul had Timothy circumcised to avoid offending Jews. In this instance, the depiction of Paul in Acts is consistent with the Paul of 1 Corinthians 9:20, though the Paul of 9:21 makes no appearance in its narrative. 4. John. “The law,” according to John 1:17, “was given [understood: “by God”] through Moses.” But it was given, according to 7:19, to the Jews and is spoken of elsewhere as “their law” (15:25; see “your law” in 8:17; 10:34): clearly, neither John nor his readers think of the law’s prescriptions as binding on them. In part, this may be because a community that was inclusive of Gentiles may not have felt any obligation to observe practices regarded as distinctively Jewish. But it is also apparent that John believes the coming of Christ inaugurated a new age, one distinguished from that of the law by its gifts of “grace and truth” (1:17). Symbolically, John depicts Jewish rites of purification (2:6) giving way to the “wine” of the new age (2:8–11); the physical temple in which Jews worship provides a mere metaphor for Jesus’ death and resurrection (2:19–22) and will lose its point when the Father is worshiped “in spirit and truth” (4:19–24); the manna eaten by the ancestors of the Jews in the wilderness imparted no lasting life, but pointed to Jesus, the “bread of [eternal] life” (6:31–58); and so on. The commandments to be observed by Jesus’ disciples are those given not by Moses, but by their Lord (13:34; 14:15, 21; 15:10, 12). Yet John (like all the New Testament writers) insists that, rightly understood, the law points ahead to Jesus. Ostensibly, it is faithfulness to Moses (5:45; 9:28–29; see 7:49) that keeps many of Jesus’ compatriots from believing in him: “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath” (9:16; see 5:8–11, 16; 9:14). Jesus dismisses the objection as super-

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ficial (7:24): after all, if the rite of circumcision, which involves only one part of the body, may legitimately be carried out on the Sabbath, surely it cannot be wrong to heal a man’s whole body on that day (7:22–23). Cloaked by an apparent devotion to the law is a hostility bent on Jesus’ death that represents the real violation of the law (7:19, 25; note the irony of 18:28, where those pressuring Pilate to execute Jesus are depicted as scrupulous in avoiding ritual defilement). Similarly, when Jesus defends his Sabbath activities by saying that he is only imitating God his Father (5:17, 19), his opponents deem him guilty of a blasphemy that, according to their law, is punishable by death (5:18; 19:7; see also 10:33). These charges, too, are rejected on the basis of the law itself: if the law is prepared to call “gods” those who communicated God’s word, it cannot be wrong for the One whom God has sent into the world, and whose works are demonstrably the works of God, to call himself God’s Son (10:34–38). But John is not content with making the negative point that the law is misused in charges against Jesus. The law testifies on his behalf (1:45; 5:39, 46–47). Those whose hearts are submissive to God will heed that testimony, come to Jesus, and find life; conversely, those to whom the love of God is foreign, who are more concerned with human praise than with pleasing God, will find themselves condemned by the very Moses whose disciples they claim to be (5:39–47; see 7:17).

The Pauline Corpus 1. 1 and 2 Corinthians. Paul’s law-free gospel appears not to have been the subject of controversy in Corinth (or in Thessalonica). “The law” refers to the Pentateuch in 1 Corinthians 9:8, 9 (here explicitly “the law of Moses”), and (presumably) 14:34. In 14:21 (referring to Isa 28:11–12), the term “law” is extended to include other parts of Scripture. When not further defined (9:20–21), “the law” is the Mosaic law code: Jews, as its subjects, are said to be “under the law,” whereas non-Jews are “outside” it. To promote his mission among Jews, Paul adopts a Jewish lifestyle (living “as one under the law”) in their midst, though insisting that he is not in fact obligated to do so (“though I myself am not under the law”). Lest the latter claim suggest a freedom to do as he pleases, Paul qualifies it immediately by saying that, as a servant of Jesus Christ, he is still bound to do God’s will. To express this obligation, Paul adopts the language of “law” from his preceding remarks about the Mosaic code (“though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law”). Elsewhere, too, Paul qualifies notions that all things are permitted to believers without suggesting an obligation to the Mosaic law code, reminding his readers that not all



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behavior is compatible with the realities of Christian existence (6:12–20; 10:23–11:1). Other references in the Corinthian epistles hint at positions developed more fully elsewhere. According to 1 Corinthians 15:56, “the power of sin is the law.” The cryptic observation becomes clear in the light of Romans 7:7–11: human rebelliousness finds, in its encounter with the commands of God’s law, the provocation it needs to express itself in sinful acts. In 2 Corinthians 3, the ministry of Moses is said to be one of the “letter” that “kills,” a “ministry of death” and “condemnation,” temporary in duration though accompanied by divine glory (3:6–11). Paul means that God’s will was indeed expressed in the commands of Torah (hence the display of divine glory); but it encountered rebellious human beings as demands imposed upon them from outside (“chiseled in letters on stone tablets”) against which they rebelled; their transgressions brought “condemnation” and “death.” Much more glorious, then, is the ministry of the new covenant, whereby God finds sinners righteous (“the ministry of justification” [v. 9]) and enables them, through the gift of the Spirit, to serve God (v. 6; cf. Rom 7:6). 2. Galatians. In Galatia, as elsewhere, Paul had established Christian communities without suggesting that non-Jewish believers need observe the distinctively Jewish practices mandated by the Mosaic law code (circumcision, food and festival laws, etc.). In his absence, other teachers had come to Galatia and attempted to impose these requirements on Paul’s converts. In effect, they were saying that the Sinaitic covenant and law remain the framework within which the people of God must live, though, to be sure, Jesus is to be acknowledged as the Messiah. Paul responds by distinguishing between two covenants (4:24) and paths to righteousness (3:11–12), insisting that the Galatians must choose between them (5:1–4). The fundamental principle of the law (“Whoever does the works of the law will live by them” [3:12, citing Lev 18:5]) differs from that of faith, as spelled out in Habakkuk 2:4: “The one who is righteous will live by faith” (or, “The one who is righteous by faith will live”) (Gal 3:11). The law both promises life to those who obey its commands and curses transgressors; only the latter sanction, however, becomes operative among the law’s subjects (3:10). But the law is not God’s last word. Indeed, it was introduced (not by God directly, but through angelic intermediaries [3:19; cf. Acts 7:38, 53; Heb 2:2] – an indication of its secondary status and role) as a temporary measure (Gal 3:19), and functioned only as a guardian or “disciplinarian until Christ came” (3:24). Believers in Christ, recognizing that no one can be found righteous by the standards of the law (2:16, 21; 3:21), have followed the example of Abraham, who was counted righteous on the

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basis of faith (3:6–9). They thus have a share in the divine promises given to Abraham (3:14, 29), promises that antedated the law by centuries and that the law could in no way alter (3:15–18). Their break with the law is depicted as a “death” (with Christ) to the law (2:19), a redemption from its curse (inasmuch as Christ took the curse upon himself [3:13; 4:5]), a deliverance from its enslavement (5:1). They are no longer “under the law” (3:23–25; 4:5; 5:18), but serve God by “walk[ing] in the Spirit” (5:16, 25) and fulfilling “the law of Christ,” which amounts to the law of love (6:2; cf. 5:14). 3. Romans. Here Paul expands upon positions staked out in Galatians. Again, the principle underlying the law is found in Leviticus 18:5: “the person who does these things [i. e., what the law commands] will live by them” (Rom 10:5; see also 2:13). But the “good” which the law requires of Jews is the same good that God requires of Gentiles if they are to find “glory and honor and immortality” (2:6–13): God will judge all human beings, without partiality, by their deeds (2:6, 11). The gift of the law (see 9:4) enables Jews to teach Gentiles what God demands of them both (2:17–20), without exempting them from the obligation to practice what they teach (2:21–27). Even apart from such teaching, God has planted in the hearts of Gentiles an awareness of what the law requires (2:14–15; see 1:32), so that Jew and Gentile alike are left without excuse for their sin (3:19; cf. 1:20). But “all have sinned” (3:23), “there is no one who is righteous” (3:10); hence, none can be found righteous (or “justified”) by the path to righteousness prescribed by the law, that of doing what the law commands: “‘no human being will be justified in [God’s] sight’ by deeds prescribed by the law” (3:20, paraphrasing Ps 143:2). What the law brings is a “knowledge of sin” (3:20). Its commands, though “holy and just and good” in themselves, provoke rebellious human nature into acts of transgression (7:5, 7–13; see also 8:7–8). Deeds (such as murder) that were sinful even before the law was enacted (“sin was indeed in the world before the law” [5:13]) appear doubly sinful as acts of deliberate transgression against a given law (see 7:13). Thus, the practical effect of the giving of the law was that “sin increased” (5:20). The problem with the law is that it has no power to evoke the righteous behavior it demands (8:3–4). Even where human beings acknowledge the goodness of its demands and want to fulfill them, the “flesh” proves inadequate to the task: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (7:19; cf. vv. 14–20). Playing on the word “law,” Paul says that he finds it to be a “law” (or rule) that when he wants to do the good, “evil lies close at hand” (7:21). Though the “law of God” may correspond to the “law” of his “mind” (since, in his mind, he acknowledges its goodness), he finds himself captive to the “law of sin” (i. e., the actual domination of sin within him) and is thus in need of deliverance from “the law of sin and of



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death” (7:22–8:2). Those who continue to seek righteousness by obeying the law’s commands are credited with a “zeal for God” (10:2); but they never reach their goal (9:31). As in Galatians, so in Romans, Paul declares that the only viable path to righteousness, for Jew and Gentile alike, is that of faith, a path distinct from that of the law (“apart from law”) though “attested by the law and the prophets” (3:21, alluding to texts such as Gen 15:6; Ps 32:1–2; Hab 2:4, quoted elsewhere in the epistle). Having provided through Christ’s death an atonement for human sins, God is able to bestow on sinners who believe “the free gift of righteousness,” to (paradoxically) declare “the ungodly” righteous through faith (3:24–26; 5:16–17; 4:5). Where the “ungodly” are concerned, their “righteousness” cannot be the product of righteous deeds that they have done (it is thus a “righteousness apart from works”), but must amount to the forgiveness of their sins (4:6–8). It is a gift that leaves them no reason to boast, not a recognition of their due (4:2–4). Playing on the word “law,” Paul declares that the “law of faith” (3:27, spelled out in 3:28 as the principle “that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law”) excludes any grounds for boasting. “Righteousness” is thus “attained,” not by those who seek it through compliance with the law, but by those who respond to the Christian message with faith (9:30–31). The gift carries with it, however, the obligation to live in God’s service (as “slaves of righteousness” [6:18]). Such service is no longer dictated by “the old written code”: believers may be said both to have been “discharged from the law” and to have “died” to it (7:6; see Gal 2:19); they are no longer “under law” (6:14–15; see also 1 Cor 9:20; Gal 5:18). Distinctive of Christian service is rather the presence of God’s Spirit (Rom 7:6; 8:4, 13–14; cf. Gal 5:16), inducing a love that, in effect, fulfills the requirements of the law (Rom 8:4; 13:8–10). Clearly, such love “fulfills” the law’s requirements, not in the sense that each of the law’s prescriptions is literally observed, but in the sense that love is the real goal that underlies each of the requirements. If all believers have been “discharged from the law,” then no believer – Jew or Gentile – is obligated to observe Jewish food or festival laws. Perhaps referring to the saying preserved in Mark 7:15, Paul writes that he is “persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself” (14:14); hence, in principle, every believer is free to eat all kinds of food (cf. 14:2). Nonetheless, Paul recognizes that believers who all their lives have treated certain days as holy and avoided certain foods as unclean may well feel as though they violate something sacred if they now act in defiance of their earlier convictions. The scruples of such “weaker” believers ought to be respected and protected by all, at the same time as the “weak” should not condemn those who do not share their compunctions (14:1–15:13). In this way, Paul attempts to work

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out the implications of Christ-like love for a community with a membership diverse in its backgrounds and opinions (see 15:1–3). 4. Philippians. In Philippians 3, Paul warns his Philippian friends against teachers (like those in Galatia) who demand that non-Jewish believers be circumcised and submit to the law of Moses. The circumcision they practice, he declares, is purely physical, a mere mutilation of the flesh; the circumcision that matters is a spiritual reality known only to those “who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus” rather than in the “flesh” (3:2–3; see Rom 2:28–29; Col 2:11). Paul goes on to say that his own “fleshly” credentials are as good as any, citing the law observance that marked his upbringing and his own zeal for the law (3:4–6). Then, drawing on the distinction (found also in Galatians and Romans) between two paths to righteousness, Paul declares that he has abandoned the righteousness based on the law and now considers all the assets he had acquired in its service as “loss” and “rubbish”; his desire instead is to “be found in [Christ],” with the “righteousness” that comes “from God based on faith” (3:7–9). 5. Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles. The term “law” is not used in Colossians. Behind 2:14 there may well lie thought of the Mosaic law as containing “demands” that human beings are obligated to meet, the transgression of which leaves them in a state of “indebtedness” to God: through the cross, God (or Christ) “eras[ed] the record [or “statement of indebtedness”] that stood against us with its legal demands.” According to 2:16–17, regulations pertaining to food and drink, and the observance of “festivals, new moons, or sabbaths” serve only as symbols pointing to spiritual realities found in Christ; there is therefore no point to their practice now that Christ has come. “Ceremonial” laws of the Mosaic code, while perhaps not the sole target of the admonition, are certainly included in it. The irrelevance for Christians of the distinctively Jewish practices of the Mosaic code is one reason why Colossians 3:11 can insist that, in the new humanity, “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision” (see also Gal 3:27–28).The same point is made in Ephesians 2:14–15: Christ “abolished” the law whose ordinances kept Jews separate from Gentiles, in order that “he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace.” According to 1 Timothy 1:9, “the law is laid down not for the innocent [or “righteous”] but for the lawless and disobedient …” The point (presumably) is that the law exercises on evildoers a restraining influence of which the righteous have no need (cf. Rom 13:3–4). The assignment of such a function to the law is meant to rule out other, objectionable uses to which it is being put (i. e., as a basis for the useless speculations of 1 Tim 1:4 and the wrongheaded prohibitions of 4:3).



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Other Writings 1. Hebrews. To readers tempted to abandon their Christian commitment, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews appeals for faithfulness by claiming the superiority of the new order initiated by Christ to the old order introduced by Moses. Part of that superiority pertains to the law. Drawing on the tradition that the Mosaic code was mediated by angels (see Acts 7:38, 53; Gal 3:19), the author of Hebrews argues that the sanctions that accompanied the giving of such a law must pale in comparison with those imposed on any who neglect a salvation spoken by the Lord himself (2:1–4; see also 10:28–31). Furthermore, the Mosaic law was inextricably connected with the levitical priesthood (7:11). It appointed to the high priesthood imperfect human beings (7:28), who qualified for the task merely on the basis of physical descent from priestly progenitors (7:16). The law prescribed the gifts and sacrifices these priests were to offer (8:3–4; cf. 10:1, 8), the rites of purification they were to perform (9:22), and the tithes they were to receive from their kindred (7:5). Yet neither the law nor the priesthood it ordained and regulated was able to take away sins. Its rites served rather as a continual reminder of sin than as the kind of cleansing that would enable a worshiper to approach, and enjoy communion with, God (7:11, 18–19; 9:6–10; 10:1–4, 11). In each of these respects, Hebrews claims that the old order has been bettered and superseded by the new. The levitical priesthood of imperfect, mortal human beings has given way to the eternal priesthood of the divine Son, who is “holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners” (7:26). The latter owes his priesthood, not to mere physical descent, but to “the power of an indestructible life” and an irrevocable divine oath (7:15–22). He has no need to offer repeated sacrifices for sins of his own; rather his once-forall sacrifice of himself is sufficient to perfect “for all time those who are sanctified” (10:14; cf. 9:14, 28) and to bring them into God’s presence (7:19, 25; 10:19–22). The imperfections of the old order were signaled already in Psalm 110, which, at a time when the levitical priesthood was firmly in place, called for a priesthood of a different order (“according to the order of Melchizedek,” 7:11); and the superiority of the latter priesthood was signaled when Abraham himself brought tithes to Melchizedek and was blessed by him (7:6–7). The change in priesthood inevitably signals a change in the status of the law that regulated it (7:11–12). The entire order (or “covenant”) has become obsolete (8:13). Clearly, our author, in speaking of the law, thinks primarily if not exclusively of its cultic prescriptions. Their divine origin is not denied (see 9:19–20); but the divine purpose assigned to the old order is limited, its obsolescence planned from the beginning. Unable itself to bring sinful human beings into communion with God, its rites drew attention to the dilemma

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(10:3) and provided a foreshadowing, or model, of the redemption effected through Christ (10:1; see 9:9). Consequently, though the covenant and institutions set forth in the Old Testament scriptures are effectively relegated to the past, the scriptures themselves retain their relevance in clarifying the nature of present realities. And they are filled with stories of warning and encouragement that readers need to heed (e. g., 3:7–4:11; 11:1–12:2). 2. James. The focus of the Epistle of James is practical rather than theological: the author is concerned, not with a theology of law, but with the inconsistency shown by those who fail to put into practice the truth they hear, or who live in ways that undercut their profession of faith in Jesus Christ (Jas 2:1). Indeed, though the moral thrust of his references to the law is in each case clear, considerable doubt surrounds what he means by “the law.” In 1:25, he speaks of the law as “perfect” (i. e., an all-encompassing and completely reliable guide to conduct) and as “the law of liberty” (i. e., a law that, when freely embraced and obeyed, enables one to live as one ought, in harmony with God and God’s creation); he urges his readers to “persevere” in their contemplation of the law and to do what it says, promising that “they will be blessed in their doing.” None of this would be out of place in a Jewish commendation of the Mosaic law. On the other hand, the context suggests that the “law” here is the equivalent of “the implanted word that has the power to save your souls” (1:21) and “the word of truth” by which God “gave us birth” (1:18). In these latter references, the message about Jesus Christ seems to be intended (see 1 Pet 1:23–25); presumably its ethical implications must at least be included in the “law” of verse 25. But precise definitions are not called for. James directs his readers’ attention to the need to act upon the will of God as one encounters it; it is not his purpose to delimit the location of the encounter. “The whole law” in 2:10 might seem a more straightforward reference to the Mosaic code, particularly inasmuch as it is illustrated by the love commandment of Leviticus 19:18 (Jas 2:8) and by the prohibitions of adultery and murder from the Decalogue (2:11). Against the straightforward identification, however, it has been argued that “the whole law” of whose fulfillment James speaks in 2:10 can hardly include the “ritual” or “ceremonial” commandments, in whose observance he shows no interest; indeed, 1:27 seems to indicate that the “purity” with which James is concerned is not ritual. Furthermore, given the evidence of the epistle that James is familiar with the teaching of Jesus, he must have thought that the law needed to be understood as interpreted by Jesus, who stressed exclusively its ethical requirements. The point is thought to be confirmed by the reference in 2:8 to the “royal law,” which is taken to mean the law, as articulated by Jesus,



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that governs life in the kingdom whose coming he proclaimed (2:5). Finally, the reference to “the law of liberty” in 2:12 recalls 1:25 and suggests that the broader understanding of “law” apparent from the context of 1:25 may be intended here as well. In short, what James means by “the law” is again ambiguous though, again, his point is not: anyone who shows partiality toward the rich is transgressing the commandment to love one’s neighbor. Professed compliance with other commandments does not offset disobedience to this commandment, since violation of any part of the law is sufficient to mark one as a transgressor (2:9–11). According to 4:11, those who slander or condemn a brother or sister are guilty of slandering or condemning the law itself. By acting in total disregard of the commandment to love one’s neighbor (Lev 19:18; the more specific prohibition of slander in Lev 19:16 may be in mind as well), they behave as though they were free to choose which commandments to obey; in effect, they set themselves above the law of God, acting rather as its judge than as its doer. Since God is both lawgiver and judge, those who put themselves above the law by judging their neighbor display a perilous presumption (4:12). 3. Catholic epistles and Revelation. The word “law” does not occur in the remaining New Testament writings (1 and 2 Peter; 1, 2, and 3 John; Jude; Revelation), nor is the Mosaic code discussed under other terminology. In no case does the question whether Christians ought to observe the distinctively Jewish provisions of Mosaic law appear to be an issue. And though each writing strongly insists on the moral obligations of believers, those obligations are explicitly rooted, not in the law code given to Israel, but in Christian perceptions of reality: the example of Christ must be followed (1 Pet 2:21; 4:1; 1 John 2:6); the passions that dominate the lives of (non-believing) Gentiles must now, in the lives of believers, give way to a life reflecting the holiness and will of God (1 Pet 1:14–16; 4:1–4); all who claim to know the God who is love must themselves show love for others (1 John 4:7–8), and so on. Occasional references to “commandments” intend those issuing from Christ himself and transmitted by his apostles (so 2 Pet 3:2; see 2:21), or originating with God the Father and constituted by the requirement of faith in the Son and love for one another, as commanded by the Son (1 John 2:3–4, 7–8; 3:22–24; 4:21; 5:2–3; 2 John 5–6). Even the (unspecified) “commandments of God” of Revelation 12:17; 14:12 are immediately linked with the “testimony” or “faith of Jesus.” Yet though the ethical prescriptions of these writings are not traced to the Mosaic law code, the books of Moses continue to function as authoritative scripture, providing illustrations both of behavior to be emulated and of the judgment that awaits the immoral (e. g., 1 Pet 3:6; 2 Pet 2:5–8, 15–16; 3:5–6; 1 John 3:12; Jude 5, 7, 11).

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Bibliography Barth, Gerhard. “Matthew’s Understanding of the Law.” In Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held, Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew. London: SCM, 1963, 58–164. Dunn, James D. G. Jesus, Paul, and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990. – editor. Paul and the Mosaic Law. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001. Pancaro, Severino. The Law in the Fourth Gospel: The Torah and the Gospel, Moses and Jesus, Judaism and Christianity according to John. Leiden: Brill, 1975. Pettem, Michael. “Luke’s Great Omission and His View of the Law.” New Testament Studies 42 (1996): 35–54. Räisänen, Heikki. Jesus, Paul and Torah: Collected Essays. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992. – Paul and the Law. Second edition. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1987. Sanders, E. P. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983. Schreiner,Thomas R. The Law and Its Fulfillment: A Pauline Theology of Law. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993. Seifrid, M. A. “Jesus and the Law in Acts.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 30 (1987): 39–57. Stuhlmacher, Peter. “The Law as a Topic of Biblical Theology.” In Stuhlmacher, Reconciliation, Law, and Righteousness: Essays in Biblical Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986, 110–133. Syreeni, Kari. “Matthew, Luke, and the Law: A Study in Hermeneutical Exegesis.” In The Law in the Bible and Its Environment, edited by Timo Veijola. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990, 126–155. Thielman, Frank. The Law and the New Testament: The Question of Continuity. New York: Crossroad, 1999. – Paul and the Law: A Contextual Approach. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1994. Watson, Francis. Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith. London: T. & T. Clark International, 2004. Westerholm. Stephen. “The Law and the ‘Just Man’ (1 Tim 1,3–11).” Studia Theologica 36 (1982): 79–95. – Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Wilson, S. G. Luke and the Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Chapter 7

Law and Gospel in Jesus and Paul1 Neither Jesus nor Paul could avoid addressing issues related to the Torah; yet for neither Jesus nor Paul was Torah the focus of his mission. That place, we may say, in both cases was occupied by the “gospel.” “The kingdom of God is at hand,” proclaims the Markan Jesus; “repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15, RSV).2 For Paul, the “gospel” that he preached could be summed up in the words “Christ died for our sins …, he was buried, and … he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor 15:1–4). My concern in this paper is not to add a few inches to the already imposing mountains of scholarly literature on Jesus’ or Paul’s “view of the law” per se; nor do I intend to address their respective understandings of “the gospel.”3 To be explored here is rather the relationship between law and gospel, as that relationship is seen by Jesus and Paul. Why did God give the law to Moses – as both Jesus and Paul believe he did – if the gospel was to follow? What role is the Mosaic law thought to play in preparation for, or the proclamation of, the gospel? Conversely, why is the gospel needed where God has already given the law? What role does the gospel play that the law could not play in the divine scheme of things? These are the types of questions that I wish to address in this paper. To address them here in even the most preliminary way will require a strict limitation of the sources to be looked at. In the case of Paul, our subject is discussed primarily in his letters to the Romans and the Galatians. For purposes of this paper, I will look primarily at the argument of Galatians (particularly chapter 3), drawing only occasionally on other parts of Paul’s writings. In the case of Jesus, our attention is naturally drawn to the Matthean Jesus: of all the Gospels, it is certainly Matthew’s that is most sugges1  This paper was prepared for oral presentation at the symposium on Jesus and Paul held at Baylor University (November 2004). In revising it for publication, I have chosen to retain the style of the paper as originally given; documentation has been added only where it seemed essential. 2  Cf. Matt 4:17; 10:7; Luke 10:9, 11. Matthew sums up Jesus’ message as the “gospel of the kingdom” (Matt 4:23; 9:35 [RSV]). See also Luke 4:43; 7:22; 8:1. Unless otherwise indicated, biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version. 3  I am thus not concerned here to compare the substance of Jesus’ “gospel” of the dawning kingdom of God with that of Paul’s “gospel” of the crucified and resurrected Christ.

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tive for our topic.4 (Matthew’s Gospel has added interest in that it offers what is, in a number of ways, a different perspective from that of Paul.) As a framework for the discussion of Matthew, I will use the encounter, related in each of the Synoptic Gospels, between Jesus and an unnamed inquirer now universally known as the “rich young ruler.” In Matthew, the story begins with chapter 19, verse 16.

The Gospel Supersedes the Law? “Teacher,” the young man asks, “what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” Perhaps we are not as surprised as we ought to be that the young man even raised such a question. Didn’t every right-thinking Jew already know the answer? God had chosen Israel as his people. He had given them his law. He had told them, “Do this and you will live.”5 Admittedly, the words were initially taken as prescribing the path to blessing throughout one’s life on earth. But the prescription would hardly change for Jews of Jesus’ day who believed in life beyond the grave as well: Keep what God has commanded you to keep and you will enjoy God’s blessing – in this life and the next. Perfection, moreover, was not required: God had ordained ways to atone for sin for those who repented of their wrongdoing. Why, then, would an informed, religious Jew wonder what they had to do to “inherit eternal life”? For our purposes, it will be convenient to assume that our young man’s concern about entrance into “life” was stimulated by the teaching of Jesus. As well it might be: after all, much that Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel seems designed to provoke the kind of question raised by our rich young man. “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (13:44). This is a parable, to be sure; but it is hard to see what in the parable would stand for “Show faithfulness to God by keeping God’s commandments!” Entering the kingdom seems rather to be a matter of wise investing – surely an approach that would peak the interest of our “rich young ruler”! But what, the young man might well want to know, would it mean in real life for him to “sell all that he has and buy the field”? “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (13:45–46). The merchant is undoubtedly portrayed as doing in his situation what Jesus’ listeners ought to do in theirs. But again, our 4  Note that whenever “Jesus” is used in the discussion that follows, it is Matthew’s portrait of Jesus that is meant. 5  So we may paraphrase Lev 18:5. See also, e. g., Deut 30:15–20.



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young man might well wonder what it would mean for him to exchange his present possessions for a goodly pearl. What, in real life, should be done to have a part in God’s kingdom? Jesus’ teaching in these parables appears designed to provoke the young man’s question. And the intended answer appears to be something quite different from keeping the law. But what, specifically, does Jesus have in mind? We may suppose that our young man knows even more about Jesus. Much that Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel suggests that a new and decisive stage in history is about to dawn, or has already begun to dawn, and that a fresh response is required. “The kingdom of heaven has come near,” Jesus announces (4:17). Of course, in one sense God’s kingdom,6 God’s rule, is always with us: “[God’s] kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and [his] dominion endures throughout all generations” (Ps 145:13). God’s rule is eternal in the sense that God is always in control (cf. Dan 4:34–35). Still, in Jesus’ day (as in our own) not everyone can be said to acknowledge or submit to God’s rule; God’s righteous demands are widely ignored or flouted. And as a result, God’s creation is marred by human idolatry, immorality, injustice, and violence. “The kingdom of heaven has come near” can only mean that God is about to put things right, to deal decisively with all that is evil, to establish his rule in a way that none can ignore. But how, our young man might well wonder, is one to prepare for this pending development? New times demand new measures: what measures should he take to ensure his part in the coming kingdom? Jesus goes even further. It is not simply that the kingdom of God is about to break in; its day is already dawning. The law and the prophets lasted until John, but their day has now past; “from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matt 11:12–13). To his disciples Jesus says, “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it” (13:16–17). Not even optimistically can we suppose that our rich young ruler will have overheard these latter words, directed to the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples. But perhaps with a little good will we can picture him hearing Jesus denounce his contemporaries for failing to repent when something greater than Jonah, something greater than Solomon, is here in their midst, right now (12:41–42). Yet again, the demand for repentance on Jesus’ lips never seems to mean returning to 6  Occasionally Matthew uses the expression “kingdom of God” (Matt 12:28; 19:24; 21:31, 43; it is found consistently in the Gospels of Mark and Luke); but he prefers “kingdom of heaven.” In Jewish circles “heaven” was at times substituted for “God” as a sign of reverence for the deity; the phrases are equivalent in meaning. See Dalman, Words, 91–96, 217–219.

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an ever more faithful observance of Torah. The crowd attracted to Jesus included people notoriously negligent in attending to the law;7 but Jesus does not direct them back to its statutes. Indeed, Jesus’ own reputation, at least in certain matters of law-observance, seems dubious.8 And to at least one challenge he responds that new wine demands new wineskins (9:17). In short, however strange it might seem that a right-thinking religious Jew like our rich young ruler would wonder what he had to do to inherit eternal life, it is not strange at all that the issue became urgent, and its answer uncertain, for one who listened to the teaching of Jesus. In the texts we have looked at so far, Jesus seems to be saying, “The day of the law and the prophets has passed. Now the kingdom of God is upon you, and it is to that kingdom that you must declare your allegiance. Leave behind the old wineskins; prepare for new wine. Buy the field in which the treasure of the kingdom is found. Purchase that goodly pearl.” To all of which a young man might well respond, “Parables are fine for stimulating interest and provoking reflection. But tell me now, in plain text, what I must do to have a part in the kingdom of God!”

The Law Accompanying the Gospel? And so, Jesus responds, in plain text: “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments … You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and your mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (19:17–19). “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” The kingdom of God and the age to come are open to those who show themselves in this life submissive to God’s rule; and you show your submission to God by obeying God’s commandments in the law of Moses. If our young man wasn’t perplexed before, he has every reason to be so now. Jesus’ answer sounds suspiciously like getting out the old wineskins. But before we pursue further our young man’s quandary, let’s pause and ask whether, if he had listened carefully to other things that Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel, he might not have been somewhat prepared for Jesus’ answer here. After all, Matthew does insist repeatedly that the coming of Jesus is simply the climactic conclusion of what has gone before. In his editorial comments, Matthew is frequently concerned to have us understand that Jesus fulfills the expectations announced within the scriptures of 7  8 

See, e. g., Matt 9:10; 11:19. See, e. g., Matt 12:1–8. 9–13; and note 15:1–2.



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Israel.9 The same point is repeatedly made by the chief protagonist in his Gospel. To say, as Matthew’s Jesus says, that the day that God’s people have longed for has now come is certainly to indicate that something new and decisive is taking place (Matt 13:16–17); but it is also to say that what is now happening is the climax of all that God has been doing for centuries with the people of Israel. When disciples of John the Baptist ask Jesus whether he is the one for whom everyone is waiting, Jesus replies: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (11:4–5). What Jesus is doing is just what Isaiah said would happen in the glorious future.10 What is now taking place is simply what the prophets foretold. Now if Jesus represents the climactic fulfillment of all that God has been doing with Israel, there is no reason to expect God’s will for his people to be any different in the time of Jesus from what it has always been. “Do not think [Jesus says] that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (5:17). When Jesus sums up human ethical responsibilities in the so-called “Golden Rule” – “Do to others as you would have them do to you” – he adds, “For this is the law and the prophets” (7:12). In other words, what the law and the prophets required in the past is still required today, and it can be summed up in the Golden Rule. When Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment, he replies with not one, but two: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And then he adds again, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (22:37–40). That is, the message of the law and the prophets retains its force today, and it can be summed up in the commandments to love God and love one’s neighbor. God’s demands remain today what they were when the law was given to Moses. Taken by itself, all of this seems straightforward enough. And it need not be contradicted by the stories in which Jesus himself is thought to be lax in certain matters of law observance or by his failure to insist on scrupulous law observance by his followers. Jesus’ point could well be (indeed, Jesus’ point seems to have been) that his contemporaries had obscured the weightier matters of the law (justice, mercy, and faith) by their punctilious observance of lesser matters, the laws of tithing and ritual purity (23:23–24). The law of Moses is still the law of God, but we must put the emphasis where God put the emphasis when he said in Hosea, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (9:13).11 9 

Matt 1:17, 22–23; 2:15, 17–18, 23, etc. See Isa 35:5–6; 61:1. 11  See also Matt 12:7; the reference is to Hos 6:6. 10 

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True submission to God’s will is not measured by one’s conformity with such external measures as tithing one’s produce and maintaining standards of ritual purity. True submission to God’s will is found in the attitude of one’s heart, and in deeds of love and mercy. Even in our story, when Jesus says to the young man, “Keep the commandments,” he repeats exclusively the moral commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery,” and so on. The coming of the kingdom, in short, requires a truly radical observance of God’s law, and one must focus on its essentials; but the law of God still states what God requires even when the gospel of the kingdom is proclaimed. So we might think if we simply focused on these latter texts; but these texts, as we have seen, are not alone. The relationship between the law and the gospel seems differently portrayed in different texts. Has the day of the law passed, so that something else is required today? Or does the law of Moses remain the statement of God’s will even now when the gospel of the kingdom is being proclaimed? Before we resort to speculation on the matter, let us return to our story.

The Law Overshadowed by the Gospel? Our young man, let us remember, is a right-thinking, well brought up, religious Jew who has known and observed the commandments from his youth; and he says as much to Jesus (19:20). To which Jesus replies, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (19:21). The young man thinks that an impossible price to pay, and he goes away sorrowfully (19:22). Jesus’ response as found in Mark and Luke12 leaves no doubt that the young man must sell his possessions and follow Jesus if he is to enter God’s kingdom. Matthew’s version seems more ambiguous: if the young man wishes to be perfect, he must sell what he owns and follow Jesus; perhaps, however, something less might be sufficient if he is content with gaining eternal life. But the sequel appears to rule out the more relaxed interpretation:13 in Matthew, as in Mark and Luke, Jesus makes it clear that entry into eternal life is very much the issue, and that those like our rich young ruler with many possessions find it no easier to follow the path to life than camels find squeezing through the eye of a needle (19:23–26). 12 

Mark 10:21; Luke 18:22. the discussion in Davies and Allison, Matthew, 3.49; Luz, Matthew 8–20, 513–514. 13 See



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If Jesus’ first response – “Keep the commandments” – insisted on submission to God by observing the commandments given to Moses, the second response insists on a radical commitment to Jesus, with whom God’s kingdom comes. What this in effect means is that the answer to our question about the relationship between the law and the gospel lies in the relationship between Jesus’ first response to the rich young ruler and his second. Why would Jesus tell the young man that, in order to inherit eternal life, he needed to obey the Mosaic commandments, as though that were an adequate answer, only to add later on, “Oh, yes, one more thing: Sell all you own, give to the poor, and come, follow me!” One answer, superficially plausible, we may rule out at once. We are surely not to think that admission to the kingdom is granted to those who meet two quite distinct stipulations – “Obey Moses!” and “Follow Jesus!” – as though Jesus thought initially only of the first requirement but later recalled and added the second. Unless the first response was hopelessly misleading, the second response must in some way restate, or follow from, the first, perhaps along these lines: “You may think you have kept the law of Moses, but you haven’t really loved God with all your heart, soul, and strength as Moses requires. You love your possessions more than you love God. So I will prove to you that you aren’t really keeping Moses’ law by asking whether you are willing to part with your possessions and be my disciple.” On this interpretation, the path to life remains to keep the law of Moses. Jesus’ second response, that the young man should forsake all he owns and follow him, is the test that will show whether the young man has really done what Jesus required in his first (and fundamental) response, observe the law of Moses. Discipleship of Jesus, on this understanding, is demanded as a contemporary expression of the love of God required in the Mosaic law. Another way of looking at it would be to say that behind both the law of Moses and the words of Jesus lies the same fundamental requirement, that human beings give themselves fully to God and to doing God’s will. That same submission to God which has hitherto been expressed in radical obedience to the law of Moses must now, in the presence of God’s kingdom, be expressed by recognizing, welcoming, and devoting oneself to the cause of the kingdom of God that is present in Jesus’ activity. On this interpretation, Jesus’ second response, that the young man should forsake all he owns and come and follow Jesus, is what submission to God’s will requires now in the light of recent developments, though up till now it has meant what Jesus stated in the first response, observing the law of Moses. In fact, of course, these two interpretations share much in common. On either reading, the God of Moses is seen to be the same God whose kingdom breaks in with Jesus’ appearance. And on either reading, one who truly submits to the God of Moses will now be prepared to follow Jesus.

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What can we conclude about the relationship between the law and the gospel from this brief survey of Matthew’s Gospel? At least, I would suggest, the following points. 1. The first observation is self-evident but so fundamental to be worth repeating. Underlying everything said about the law and the gospel are the convictions that God is God, that humans live in God’s world, and that it is appropriate, right, and the path to life and blessing, in this world and the next, for human beings to acknowledge God and submit to God’s will. 2. It is also self-evident in Matthew’s Gospel that the God of Moses is the God of Jesus Christ. But perhaps we should begin the other way around. Because the God of Jesus Christ is also the God of Moses, Jesus affirms the law of Moses as a statement of God’s will. Humans who submit to God’s will, as they ought, will obey the commandments God gave to Moses. To be sure, those commandments must be interpreted aright, with primary focus given to the commandments to love God and one’s neighbor. Indeed, so central in Jesus’ teaching are the commandments to love God and neighbor that requirements of tithing, ritual purity, and Sabbath observance are virtually displaced.14 They turn up in Matthew’s Gospel only in contexts where Jesus opposes those careful to keep them (12:1–14; 15:1–20; 23:23–26); and tax collectors and prostitutes, who were certainly not scrupulous in these areas, are proclaimed more fit for the kingdom than religious leaders, who certainly were (Matt 21:31; cf. Luke 18:9–14). Mark goes further still, concluding from one of Jesus’ sayings that Jesus declared all foods clean, thus in effect doing away with whole chapters of Pentateuchal law (Mark 7:19). Paul appears to be familiar with precisely this tradition when he writes, “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself” (Rom 14:14).15 But these are conclusions drawn from sayings of Jesus by later interpreters. Jesus himself seems content, in principle at least, to affirm the law of Moses, though stressing its central commandments. Indeed, the Jesus of Matthew insists explicitly that he did not come to abolish the law (Matt 5:17); and a saying preserved somewhat differently in Matthew and Luke proclaims that not one smidgeon of the law could ever pass away.16 So the God of Jesus Christ is also the God of Moses, and Jesus broadly affirms the Mosaic law. We may also note – it will become significant shortly – that Matthew (like the other Synoptic Gospels) remains faithful to the activities of the historical Jesus by not even raising the issue of Gentile observance of the law. 14 

Cf. Gerhardsson, Ethos, 41–45. See my Jesus and Scribal Authority, 81–82. 16  Matt 5:18 (Matthew adds “until all is accomplished”); Luke 16:17. 15 



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3. If the God of Jesus Christ is the God of Moses, the God of Moses is also the God of Jesus Christ. True faithfulness to Moses will thus necessarily show itself in the welcome one gives to, and the devotion one shows for, Jesus’ message of the kingdom. The giving of God’s law on Mount Sinai was an important stage in God’s dealings with Israel. But the climax of God’s dealings with Israel and with humankind as a whole is the inauguration of God’s kingdom in the ministry of Jesus. The giving of the law, when rightly understood, makes clear how God’s people are to live in submission to God. But sin, sickness, demonic powers, and death remain realities in the world, even among the people to whom the law was given. Both human deliverance from sin and its consequences, and the transformation of God’s sin-scarred creation as a whole require a divine intervention beyond the giving of the law. In the activity of Jesus, God – yes, the God of Moses – is decisively at work, overcoming sickness, death, and the powers of evil,17 forgiving sins and showing his love for sinners,18 summoning all to a place in the kingdom whose powers are now already on display, though its consummation remains a future expectation (cf. Matt 22:1–10). In this transition period, whoever receives Jesus receives the one who sent him (10:40). And since the one who sent Jesus is the God of Moses, one cannot be truly loyal to Moses without showing devotion to Christ. Indeed, so present is God in the person of his Son Jesus Christ that Jesus can command a kind of allegiance that neither Moses nor any other man of God who is not God’s Son could ever require. Jesus summons people (like our rich young ruler) to be his disciples, to take up their cross and follow him (10:38; 16:24), to be willing to lose their life for his sake (10:39; 16:25), to love him more than one loves father or mother, son or daughter (10:37). The only Old Testament parallel to these demands for devotion is the “first” commandment (Matt 22:38) of the law of Moses: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength (Deut 6:5). Love for God – the God of Moses – is thus to be shown by discipleship of Jesus Christ. Put differently, those committed to obeying the law of Moses as an expression of their submission to God will now, at the decisive moment in history when God’s kingdom dawns, take up their cross and follow Jesus. 4. Though the law of Moses makes clear how God’s people are to live in submission to him, they inevitably fall short. It is axiomatic for Jesus that people, in contrast with God, are evil, and that the human heart is bent on evil (cf. 7:11; 15:18–19). It follows that those whom Jesus invites into his kingdom are sinful human beings, and Jesus includes the most notorious of their number in his invitation. By God’s love and grace, forgiveness is 17  18 

Matt 4:23–24; 8:16; 12:15, etc. Matt 9:2, 10–13, etc.

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offered to the greatest of sinners (cf. 9:10–13). Nor did Jesus only communicate in words the offer of forgiveness. He lived a life of forgiveness; and he died a death of forgiveness as well, giving his life as a ransom for many (20:28), offering his life’s blood for the forgiveness of sins (26:28). The life of discipleship is built upon grace, from beginning to end. But the reverse is also true: the forgiving and sustaining grace of God is experienced only by those who submit to the rule of God and to discipleship of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we could sum up the relationship between the law and the gospel in Matthew’s Gospel by saying that, while the coming of the kingdom does not affect the validity of the law as a statement of God’s will, the law’s importance is relativized. Correctly understood, with due emphasis given to its central commands, the law is still to be observed even among the followers of Jesus. But the giving of the law itself did nothing to end the rule of sin or to overthrow the powers of darkness; and as the coming of the kingdom represents the decisive stage in God’s dealings with beleaguered humanity, so one’s response to the message of the kingdom proves decisive if one is to participate in the dawning age of righteousness. We may add that Matthew (and the Matthean Jesus) attributes forgiveness of sins, and deliverance from sins, to the work and death of Jesus, not to the rites of atonement prescribed in the law (1:21; 20:28; 26:28).

Redemption from the Law The surface of our topic has scarcely been scratched, but we must move on (much more briefly) to Paul. The Galatian churches to which Paul wrote his epistle were ones that he himself had founded. After his departure, however, they had been visited by others, presumably messianic Jews, who insisted that the Galatians’ faith in Jesus as Messiah was fine, but they must also submit to Moses and be circumcised. There can be no question how these outsiders envisaged the relationship between law and gospel. For them, the gospel of Jesus Christ functions within the framework established by the Mosaic law. The law God gave on Sinai, patently including the requirement of circumcision, must be obeyed by all who would claim to be God’s people. The gospel that God’s messiah has come in no way alters the basic structure of the covenant given on Mount Sinai. In Paul’s mind these people preach a distorted gospel – or, rather, it is no gospel at all (Gal 1:6–7). For the Paul of Galatians, the law must not be thought to provide the framework within which the gospel functions; nor can it be said to retain its validity, though relativized in importance. Rather, the law simply gives place to the gospel. Jesus himself was born under the law (Gal 4:4); but with Jesus the law’s validity came to an end. The law was no more than a



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temporary measure imposed four hundred thirty years after God made a promise to Abraham, and binding only until Christ came in fulfillment of that promise (Gal 3:17–19). To impose its requirements now is to overlook the progression that has taken place in salvation history. Those who have been declared righteous through faith in Christ are no longer under the law (Gal 3:24–25). That the coming of the gospel follows the era of the law and marks the end of the law’s hegemony by no means exhausts what Paul has to say about the relationship between law and gospel. Christ redeems those under the law (Gal 4:5). More specifically, he redeems them from the curse of the law (3:13). Presupposed in these claims are notions as axiomatic for Paul as they are for Jesus. Human beings live in God’s world. As God’s creatures, they live rightly only when they acknowledge God and obey his will. The Mosaic law spells out the good path in which humans are to walk19 if they would enjoy life and divine blessing in this world and the next. The law’s demands are holy, righteous, and good, to use Paul’s language in Romans 7:12. The same notion underlies Galatians as well where, according to 3:12, the one who carries out what Moses commands will live; where, according to 5:14, the whole law is summed up in the demand to love one’s neighbor as oneself; and where, according to 5:22–23, the law has no objection to raise against one whose life is marked by the fruit of the Spirit. What the law commands is certainly good, and those who practice it will find life; on the other hand, divine judgment awaits those who flout its demands. Here Paul quotes Deuteronomy: “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law” (3:10, citing Deut 27:26). The problem, as Paul sees it, is that all human beings are thus cursed and in need of redemption from the curse of the law. They belong to the present evil age (1:4). They live in the “flesh” and inevitably practice the sinful “works of the flesh” (5:19–21). It is impossible that “flesh” could be approved by God on the basis of its observance of the works of the law (2:16), for all – Jews as well as Gentiles – are found to be sinners (2:17). The law is by no means opposed to God’s promise and purposes, but it has no power to give life to the dead (3:21). All it can do with sinful human beings is consign them to imprisonment under the power of sin, there to await redemption in Jesus Christ from sin’s power and the law’s curse (3:13, 21–24). They are both redeemed and declared righteous by God apart from the works of the law, by faith in Jesus Christ (2:16). 19  Though given to Israel, the Mosaic law (at least in its moral demands) spells out the good required of all human beings. Jews, possessing the law, are therefore in a position to instruct Gentiles in their moral obligations (so Rom 2:17–21). See my Perspectives, 266–271; also “Righteousness,” 257–259 [chapter 13 in this volume].

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Let me sum up what we have seen so far about the relationship between law and gospel in Galatians. The law prescribes a path to life that human beings, subject to the power of sin, inhabitants of the present evil age, prove unwilling and unable to follow. On sinful humanity, the law can only pronounce its curse. The death of Christ sets believers free from the present evil age (Gal 1:4), redeems them from the curse of the law (3:13; 4:5), and inaugurates an era in which God is served by people who are no longer under the law (3:23–26; 5:18).

Law and Gospel in Jesus and Paul All of this sounds very different from the Jesus of Matthew, for whom (as I argued above) the law retains its validity, though its importance is relativized. The nature of the differences as well as areas of overlap will emerge more clearly if we bring the two positions into closer comparison. For both Jesus and Paul, the law of Moses is the law of God and a statement of how God’s people are to live. For the Matthean Jesus, it is an abiding statement of God’s will; yet it is clear that the giving of the law suffices neither to establish God’s rule on earth nor to produce subjects fit to participate in its blessings; for that, the gospel of the coming, activity, and death of the Messiah is needed. For Paul, too, the demands of the law are the demands of God. But Paul locates the law’s demands within the Sinaitic covenant; and by the terms of that covenant only the obedient enjoy God’s blessing, while those who violate the covenant’s stipulations become subject to its curse. Since all human beings are sinners, the law and the covenant to which it belongs prove to be institutions of condemnation and death from which only Christ can deliver (cf. 2 Cor 3:7, 9). We may thus say that Paul shares with the Matthean Jesus the conviction that the giving of the law does not suffice to bring salvation to sinful human beings, and that salvation is only made possible through the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Pauline emphasis that we do not find in Matthew is the negative role played by the law in the drama of human redemption: the notion that the disobedient are subject specifically to the sanctions of the law, and thus that sinful human beings are in need of deliverance from the very law of God. Nowhere in the Gospels is redemption from God’s law envisaged. The difference is real enough, though perhaps the reminder that divine judgment and the human need for forgiveness figure largely in the Gospels will keep us from exaggerating their distance from Pauline thought at this point. If salvation requires the gospel, what can we say about the law as guide for the behavior of those saved through the gospel? For purposes of comparison it will be useful to distinguish the law’s ritual or ceremonial



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demands, on the one hand, from its moral demands, on the other – though we should recognize that neither the Gospels nor the Pauline epistles make such a distinction explicitly. We noted some ambiguity in the Jesus tradition about the validity, or at least the importance, of parts of the Mosaic law: areas such as tithing, ritual purity, Sabbath, and food laws. The whole law is in places affirmed; but elsewhere the essence of the law is said to lie in the Golden Rule or the love commandments, and Jesus never suggests that his followers need to take up careful observance of the laws traditionally labeled “ritual” or “ceremonial.” The point, in the Jesus’ tradition, is not that these parts of the law were once valid and binding though they are now no longer so,20 but rather that these areas pertain to the peripheral rather than the central concerns of the law – and attention ought to be focused on the latter. It seems most unlikely that Jesus would have pressed their adoption by Gentiles when he makes no issue of their observance among his Jewish followers; but the Gentile question does not arise in the context of Jesus’ activities. With Paul the Gentile question is precisely what occasions the epistle to the Galatians: as we have seen, messianic Jews were insisting that Paul’s Gentile converts submit to the laws traditionally labeled “ritual” or “ceremonial,” beginning with circumcision. We might, indeed, be tempted to explain the difference between Jesus’ relative indifference toward these areas of the law and Paul’s vehement opposition to their adoption by his converts by pointing to the differences in their audience and situation: Paul wrote to Gentiles for whom the imposition of the law would be both novel and difficult, whereas Jesus lived among Jews accustomed to its practice. But as we have noted, Paul sees something more fundamental at stake than the impracticability of imposing Jewish ritual observances on Gentiles. Neither Jews nor Gentiles are able to meet the law’s righteous requirements; therefore a righteousness different from that of the law must be found if “sinners” – whether Jewish or Gentile – are to be declared righteous by God. Paul finds this different, extraordinary righteousness in the righteousness of faith:21 those declared righteous by faith are redeemed from the law and its curse. If those thus delivered should then submit to the rite of circumcision, they would be reverting to the Sinaitic covenant and obligating themselves to live by its terms once more (5:3). They would be 20  Unless, of course, the “all” that must be “accomplished” before the law (or some part of the law?) “passes away” (Matt 5:18) refers to an event in the past (the death of Jesus?); but what then would be the point of the temporal indicator “until heaven and earth pass away”? On this interpretation, see Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1.494–495; Luz, Matthew 1–7, 266–267. 21  See my Perspectives, 273–284; “Righteousness,” 262–264 [chapter 13 in this volume].

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returning to a life of slavery, falling from grace, cutting themselves off from Christ (5:1–4). The peripheral concerns of the law in which Jesus shows little interest are for Paul a part of the covenant of condemnation and death from which Christians have been delivered. Interestingly enough, the practical upshot of Jesus’ and Paul’s different perspectives on the “ritual” or “ceremonial” aspects of the law is virtually identical if we agree that Jesus would not have thought that Gentiles need adopt the practice of these laws, thus approximating the position of Paul, and once we recognize that Paul considered their continued observance by Jews a matter of indifference, thus approximating the position of Jesus: “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything” (5:6; cf. 6:15; Rom 14:1–15:6). But, as we have seen, that practical upshot is reached by different routes. Jesus distinguishes the law’s weighty commands from its peripheral and concerns himself only with the former; Paul links together the ritual and the moral demands of the law, seeing both as belonging to an obsolete covenant that can only condemn sinners. And what of the law’s moral demands? The Matthean Jesus interprets them radically in the Sermon on the Mount, sums them up in the Golden Rule and the two love commandments, and impresses the importance of observing them on his disciples. Paul, having linked the ritual and the moral demands of the law as both belonging to the Sinaitic covenant, and having declared believers free from its hegemony, is left to construct a Christian ethic independent of the law. Believers are to “live by the Spirit” (5:16, 25); those who do so are not “subject to the law” (5:18). The evil they are to avoid is defined as the “works of the flesh” rather than transgressions of the law (5:19). In the lives of believers the “fruit of the Spirit” is to be evident; where it is, the law can find nothing to condemn (5:22–23). So much is clear. It remains true, however, that for Paul the law of Moses is the law of God, and the moral demands of the law represent the good that all human beings are to do. Furthermore, like Jesus, and perhaps in dependence on the Jesus tradition, Paul sees the whole law summed up in the commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Gal 5:14; cf. Rom 8:4; 13:10). While he can hardly define Christian duty in terms of carrying out the law, he must believe that the righteous behavior required in the law is in effect shown in lives where God’s Spirit bears its fruit. Though believers are not themselves under the law, the love they are to show represents the fulfillment of what the law demands (Gal 5:14).22 Once again, we may say that the practical upshot of what Paul says about Christian moral behavior corresponds closely to Jesus’ insistence on observance of the weightier matters of the law. But the route by which that upshot is reached is different. 22 

See my Perspectives, 433–438.



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Christian theologians of a later age attempted to do justice to the New Testament data by saying that believers are subject to the moral demands of the Mosaic law, though they have been freed from its “ceremonial” or “ritual” commands.23 To repeat what was said earlier: such a distinction is not native to the New Testament itself. On the other hand, it seems fair to say that the distinction can serve as a rough and ready guide to the substance of New Testament ethics, remarkably bridging the positions of Matthew and Paul. For Matthew, the distinction between “weighty” and peripheral commands differs little, one suspects, from the later terminology of moral and ceremonial. For Paul, the “works of the law” that he insists must not be imposed upon Gentiles amount in the first place to its ritual demands, while the good that even believers are to practice amounts to the law’s moral commands. What must not be lost to view, however, are, in Matthew’s case, the radical interpretations that Jesus gives to the law’s moral commands and the decisive requirement of following Jesus; in Paul’s case, the inability and disinclination of “flesh” to meet God’s demands; the necessity of salvation by grace, through faith, apart from the “works of the law”; and the decisive role played by the Spirit in Christian ethics. Let me conclude by returning to my four summary points about Jesus and seeing to what extent they can be said of Paul. 1. On the first, there is wholehearted agreement: humans live as God’s creatures in God’s world and can only enjoy life and divine blessing as they acknowledge God and submit to God’s will. 2. For Paul, as for Jesus, the God of Jesus Christ is also the God of Moses, and the law of Moses remains a statement of God’s will. But for Paul, the law as such belongs to a bygone era in salvation history, its demands representing a path to life that sinful human beings have neither the will nor the capacity to pursue, its sanctions representing the curse from which human beings need redemption. 3. For Paul, as for Jesus, the God of Moses is also the God of Jesus Christ, the climax of salvation history is reached with Christ’s coming, and allegiance to God requires allegiance to his Son. In the Gospels, such allegiance is shown in a life of discipleship: a literal following of Jesus in some cases (e. g., Matt 4:18–22; 9:9), but in all cases, obedience to his words and a willingness to confess him before others, at whatever cost. 24 In Paul’s letters, sinners are found righteous only through faith in Christ; but those so found righteous 23  See, e. g., Augustine, Against Faustus 6.2; 10.2; John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2. 7. 12–17. 24  Matt 7:24–27; 10:32–33, 37–39.

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are thereafter bound to live in the service of righteousness, their faith being active in love.25 4. Finally, as Jesus, expressing God’s love and grace, welcomes even the most notorious sinners who respond to the message of the kingdom, so Paul’s gospel is a gospel of divine grace for sinful human beings. Paul himself had once persecuted the church of God, but he had been called by God’s grace (Gal 1:13, 15). His converts, too, had been called by God into the grace of Christ (1:6), and in grace they must stand (5:4). Paul’s prayer for his spiritual children was that the “grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” would be with them (6:18). For Jesus and Paul, the law of Moses states God’s righteous demands, but God’s approval and blessing, and entrance into God’s kingdom, are all granted to sinners who respond in faith to the good news of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. And it is by God’s grace that they are now to live a life in Christ’s service. Bibliography Dalman, Gustaf. The Words of Jesus. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1902. Davies, W. D., and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vols. 1–3. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988– 1997. Gerhardsson, Birger. The Ethos of the Bible. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981. Luz, Ulrich. Matthew 1–7. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989. – Matthew 8–20. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001. Westerholm, Stephen. Jesus and Scribal Authority. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1978. – Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. – “The Righteousness of the Law and the Righteousness of Faith in Romans.” Interpretation 58 (2004): 253–264.

25 

Rom 6:12–19; Gal 5:6.

Chapter 8

Jesus, the Pharisees, and the Application of Divine Law Although the law of Moses represented the “word of God” for both Jesus and the Pharisees, the Gospels show them repeatedly challenging each other on matters related to its application. Indeed, the nature and frequency of the disputes witness to conflicting views on matters more fundamental than the interpretation of individual statutes. At stake were different ways of reading and applying the law of God – that is, differences in hermeneutics – and, closely related to this, differences in ethics. Obviously, a comprehensive study of the way in which Jesus and the Pharisees applied the divine law would far exceed the scope of this article.1 Attention will here be focused on several significant aspects of the matter that, I suggest, clearly indicate a fundamental difference in approach. Before we turn to specifics of Jesus’ and the Pharisees’ views, however, something should be said about the status of Torah in the Palestine of the postexilic period.

Torah and the Postexilic Community When Ezra the priest left the community of the exiles in Babylon for the land of his fathers, he carried the law of the God of heaven in one hand and, in the other, a decree of Artaxerxes, king of kings (Ezra 7:11–26). While everyone is aware of the role played by the divine Torah in molding the life and ethos of postexilic Jewry, the decree of the Persian king may serve as 1  I have discussed the Pharisees and their application of the law in more detail, and with numerous references to both primary and secondary sources, in my Jesus and Scribal Authority, 12–52. There was, however, no stress in that discussion on Torah as the law of a community, an important aspect of the present discussion. My concern in the second part of that study was to determine Jesus’ view of the authority of the scribes. Though the subject matter does not precisely coincide with that of this article, the evidential base of Synoptic texts is much the same. I must refer the reader to that earlier work for a more detailed study of these texts and, in particular, the discussion of what we may conclude with some probability goes back to Jesus himself. Here I work from those conclusions in order to highlight a few features that illustrate the contrast between Jesus’ views of the application of scriptural law and those of the Pharisees.

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a reminder of the status that Torah came to occupy and of the nature of its influence. Torah was not regarded as a code of private ethics, nor simply as a statement of the basis and norms for the individual’s relationship with God. Torah served as the law of a community. Indeed, by the terms of Artaxerxes’ decree, Torah became law for a particular community within specified borders (the Jews of the province “Beyond the River”); it was to be taught to those under its jurisdiction, administered by qualified officials, and enforced by royal sanctions. The situation is captured succinctly in the juxtaposition of two phrases at the close of the king’s decree: “the law of your God and the law of the king” (Ezra 7:26). The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are, in part, the story of the implementing of the divine law. Sacrifices were once again offered, feasts were kept, regulations enforced, priests and Levites, magistrates and judges fulfilled their functions: all in accordance, we are repeatedly told, with what was “written in the law of Moses the man of God” (Ezra 3:2; cf. 3:4; 6:18; Neh 8:14–15; 10:29; 13:1–3). To the extent that the scanty source material at our disposal permits a judgment, Torah seems to have remained “the law of the land” throughout the later years of Persian hegemony and, after Alexander, that of the Ptolemies.2 With the passing of Palestine from Ptolemaic to Seleucid control, sources become more numerous, the evidence quite explicit. Antiochus III guaranteed the right of the Jews to live “according to their ancestral laws” (Josephus, Ant. 12.142); that is, according to the law of Moses as it had come to be interpreted and applied among the Jews of Palestine by the early second century BCE.3 The reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes brought radical change, but the period of change proved an exception that confirms the rule. For a few years, the “ancestral laws” were abolished, the “constitution” altered.4 Jews continuing to adhere to the law of their forebears were subject to punishment, even death. But whatever purpose the decrees of Antiochus IV were intended to serve, the cost was found to be too great (1 Macc 3:29–30; 6:55–59), and the course of prudence was soon found to lie in restoring to the Jews the rule of Torah (2 Macc 11:24–25). Under the Hasmoneans, the implementation of divine law was able to proceed without foreign interference. Even Roman rule brought only a partial curtailment. Josephus, to be sure, has an obvious axe to grind in his repeated claims that Roman respect for Jewish law exceeded that of the Zealots who opposed them (J. W. 4.184; 5.401–402, 405–406; 6.99–102, 334). On the other side of 2  For the Persian period, see Bickerman, From Ezra, 13–14; Tcherikover, Civilization, 39. For Alexander, see Tcherikover, Civilization, 49. With regard to the Ptolemaic period, see in addition to Tcherikover’s study (83), Bickerman, “Charte,” 71. 3  Cf. Bickerman, “Charte,” 44–85; Tcherikover, Civilization, 83–84. 4  For a study of this terminology from 2 Maccabees, see Renaud, “Loi,” 39–67.



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the ledger must be placed a number of actions by local Roman officials in flagrant disregard of Jewish law and sentiments. Nonetheless, as a general rule, and with some restrictions (which we cannot pause here to delimit), it may be said that in the Roman period as well, Jews were free to govern their internal affairs in accordance with their law, the law of Moses.5 Some insight into the status of Torah among the Jews of the Second Temple period may be gained from a brief look at the way in which it was described in Greek by writers both pagan and Jewish.6 Moses was seen as the great legislator (nomothetēs) of the Jews. As such, he could be compared with Minos of Crete, Solon the Athenian, and Lycurgus, the putative source of Spartan law.7 Athenians found their laws on the stelae of the Royal Porch; Jews pointed to the scrolls of Torah as theirs.8 They referred to the burning of a scroll of Torah as a burning of their laws.9 The translation of the Pentateuch into Greek meant the translation of the Jewish laws, an interest in which on the part of Ptolemy II reportedly motivated the translation.10 To be sure, the Pentateuch contained more than “laws, statutes, and ordinances”; but the history, the biography, the stories, and admonitions were all seen as preparation for the giving of the commands. Hence, by the current view, all of Torah could be spoken of, not inappropriately, as the nomos, the law, of the Jews.11 In fact, Torah was explicitly spoken of as the Jewish politeia, a word perhaps best, though inadequately, rendered “constitution.” Unsympathetic pagans typically charged Jews with having laws that were misanthropic, superstitious, recent, or ridiculous.12 As a counter to this, a Torah apologetic literature grew up among the Jews that went beyond answering the specific charges made and attempted to show how Torah successfully embodied the constitutional ideals honored but never realized among the Greeks. As an instrument of paideia (the training of character and cultivating of virtue), Torah far surpassed other constitutions.13 It not only met Plato’s requirement of embodying a worthy conception of the deity,14 but had also been put into practice – as Plato’s 5 

Cf. Schürer, History, 1.357–398; 2.218–223. For pagan writers, see the convenient collection in Stern, Authors. 7  Diodorus of Sicily, Hist 1.94.1–2; Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.154, 161. 8 Josephus, Ant. 4.194; 12.56; Life 134–135. 9  1 Macc 1:56; Josephus, J. W. 2.229; cf. Ant. 20.115–117. 10  Aristeas 3, 10–11. 11  Cf. Josephus, Ant. 1.18–24; Philo, Moses 2.45–51; Creation 1–3; Cf. Bickerman, From Ezra, 49–50; Urbach, Sages, 1.289–291, 317. 12 Among numerous examples, we may cite Diodorus of Sicily, Hist 34/35.1–4; Strabo, Geography, 16. 2. 37; Josephus, Ant. 12.5–6; Ag. Ap. 2.145–146, 170–174. 13  Cf. 4 Macc 2:23; 5:23–24; Josephus, Ant. 1.6; 4.165; Ag. Ap. 2.145–146, 170–174. 14  Ant. 1.15; Ag. Ap. 2.163, 250–270. 6 

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visionary politeia never could be!15 It was more ancient than the oldest of Greek constitutions,16 yet had not needed amendment.17 It went further in encompassing every area of life,18 and commanded an obedience and loyalty among its subjects that no Greek lawgiver could claim.19 Philo, speaking of his people’s pride and treasure, feels no need of false modesty: Moses was “the best of all lawgivers in all countries, better in fact than any that have ever arisen among either the Greeks or the barbarians.” In fact, “his laws are most excellent and truly come from God.”20

The Pharisees and Divine Law At this point, however, we turn with regret from the uncomplicated world of apologetics in order to note something of the controversy that attended the actual implementation of divine law. The tensions and disputes between Sadducees and Pharisees may be profitably studied from a number of points of view. For our purposes, it is important to note that Sadducees and Pharisees represented different schools of thought on the application of divine law, 21 with opposing views on a number of basic issues. Who were the legitimate interpreters of Torah? On whom were whole areas of its legislation – such as that of ritual impurity – incumbent? How were the laws of Torah to be applied in circumstances differing from those under which they were given? Was the limited code of the written Torah to be supplemented and, if need be, revised? If so, by what procedure? To fundamental questions like these, Pharisees and Sadducees gave different answers. Thus, the Pharisees represented, among other things, a coherent approach and set of solutions to the problem of applying Torah to the community life of their day. To be sure, the Pharisees emerge from some modern treatments as little more than a pious sect concerned with the minutiae of tithing and ritual purity. This, I believe, is a mistake. The writings of the Qumran sectarians have served as a healthy reminder of the diversity of first-century Jewish Palestine. Still, our image of the Pharisees must not be fashioned overmuch after the model of the wilderness sect. The Pharisees were not isolationists. Admittedly, their interpretation of Torah’s laws about tithing and ritual pu15 

Ag. Ap. 2.220–225. Ant. 16.44; Ag. Ap. 1.7; 2.154–156, 226. 17  Ant. 4.292; Ag. Ap. 2.82, 183–184; Philo, Moses 2.14–15. 18  Ant. 3.94; Ag. Ap. 2.156, 171–174. 19  Ag. Ap. 1.43–44; 2.150, 227–228, 234–235. 20  Moses 2.12. The translation is that of F. H. Colson in the Loeb edition. 21 Cf. Ant. 13.293–298. 16 



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rity and the comparative laxity of many Jews in these matters required that careful distinctions be drawn between the faithful and the unreliable.22 Furthermore, those distinctions did necessitate some restrictions in intercourse between the two groups. But the Pharisees did not withdraw thereupon to the wilderness. They chose instead to dwell in the midst of an unclean people, a living and constant reminder of the demands of Torah, a judgment acted out in deeds and doubtless expressed many times in words on the indifference of their fellow Jews toward the yoke of heaven’s reign. Even so, as E. P. Sanders has commented, they did not necessarily refuse their less observant compatriots a part in the world to come.23 The everlasting distinction between the sons of light and the sons of darkness did not, for the Pharisees, fall along party lines.24 Nor do differences with the Qumran sect end with that. Pharisaic scribes, it must be remembered, were represented on the Sanhedrin and thus played an active role in the administration of Jewish affairs.25 Their concerns can hardly have been confined to tithing and ritual purity. The New Testament reflects Pharisaic involvement in the issues of oaths and divorce, of Sabbath observance and dedicatory vows. Josephus mentions Pharisaic tendencies in assigning punishments.26 Indeed, he speaks of the Pharisees as the most accurate interpreters of the ancestral laws, thus including the whole spectrum covered by Torah itself.27 What, then, were some of the distinctive marks of the Pharisaic approach to divine law? We may begin with the question: Who were the authoritative interpreters of Torah? After all, “a rule is what it does.”28 The wording of a statute, while perhaps susceptible to a number of interpretations, will in practice come to be construed in a particular way. The actual force of the statute thus involves not simply its original wording but also the way in which it is applied by those recognized as competent to do so. It is, of course, not essential that any smaller group within society be assigned that competence. In democratic Athens, where a distrust of experts seems to have been endemic, the citizen body as a whole came to function as the interpreters of the “laws of Solon” in the assembly and popular courts. It should be remembered, however, that in Athens the whole body of cit-

22 

m. Demai 2:2–3; t. Demai 2:2. Cf. Neusner, “Fellowship,” 125–142. m. Sanhedrin 10:1. 24 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 156–157. 25  Cf. Alon, Jews, 34. 26  Ant. 13.294; cf. 20.199. 27 Cf. J. W. 1.110; 2.162; Ant. 17.41; Life 191. And note Acts 26:5. 28  See the discussion in Freund, “Analysis,” 282–289. 23 Cf.

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izens had a part in the enacting and amending of the laws as well.29 It is thus not surprising that the interpretation of such laws was handled differently than that of the inspired Torah. Indeed, where sacred law was concerned, even the Athenians had their experts, their “exegetes,” who were consulted about the unwritten law of heaven.30 But the Jews were dealing throughout with a law they believed to be divinely given and sanctioned. The sacredness of the text and the perils of infringing it virtually required that experts be called upon to interpret it authoritatively. In ancient times, this was largely the prerogative of the priests.31 The divine law was entrusted to those who, by birth and special training within the closed ranks of the priesthood, were qualified to interpret it: an arrangement, it should be noted, that Sadducees were quite content should continue (cf. Acts 5:17). But the publication and general availability of legal codes itself tends to damage any exclusive claims on the part of closed groups to interpret them aright. To draw again on the Athenian parallel: the codification of law by Dracon and Solon represented important steps in the progression from the period when the “well-born” alone interpreted the ancestral laws to that of the popular courts.32 Similarly, when Ezra brought to Palestine the law of God that was to be read and taught to all the people, a situation was created in which anyone could, by diligent study, gain expertise in the divine law. Scribes arose from all walks of life and classes of society.33 Their intimate knowledge of Torah as well as their disciplined, pious lives compared favorably with what was often to be found among members of the priestly hierarchy in Jerusalem. In 2 Maccabees, the high priesthood seems to be held repeatedly by the highest bidder, and priests are depicted as showing less enthusiasm for their functions in the Jerusalem temple than for the attractions of the day in Jerusalem’s gymnasium (4:14–15). However overstated the case, it is undoubtedly true, both for the Hellenistic and the Roman periods, that many “sons of Aaron” did not walk in the ways of Aaron.34 Hence, there were people who were prepared to look elsewhere for guidance in the law of God. They found it in the scribes.35 Now, religious expertise was scarcely confined to one party, nor were scribes drawn exclusively from the Pharisees.36 What distinguished the Pharisees from the Sadducees – and, indeed, from the Qumran sectarians, 29 

Cf. Atkinson, “Procedure,” 107–150. Cf. Oliver, Expounders. 31  Cf. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 2.353–355. 32  Cf. Jones, Law, 102–103. 33  The competence of non-priests to interpret the law was later justified by reference to the judge of Deut 17:9 (cf. Sifre Deut 153, on 17:9). 34 Cf. b. Yoma 71b. 35  Cf. Josephus, Ant. 20.264. 36  Cf. Josephus, Ant. 18.16. 30 



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who adhered to the law of the “sons of Zadok” 37 – was their willingness to accept as binding Torah the decisions of scribes who were not priests. Perhaps still more fundamental was the matter of supplementing and revising the biblical law. This was, of course, a sensitive area. Not surprisingly, Jewish Torah apologetics dismissed out of hand the possibility of amending the law of God. The problem was nonetheless a real one. Words will not “stay in place, will not stay still,” T. S. Eliot complained, and the complaint applies to even the most carefully constructed legal documents. Circumstances change, the precise prescriptions that meet the requirements of one day no longer meet those of another. More general prescriptions may retain their validity longer; by way of compensation, however, their import will need to be spelled out in particular situations that arise. Biblical law, from this perspective, proved no different from any other. This becomes apparent, for example, if we look more closely at the implementation of Torah as recorded in Ezra-Nehemiah. In the restored community, Levites from twenty years old and upward were appointed to oversee the “work of the house of the LORD” (Ezra 3:8). But this represents a lower minimum age than what we find in Numbers (4:3, 23, 30, etc.; cf. 8:23–25). Presumably, the paucity of Levites among those who returned to Palestine after the exile necessitated the shift.38 Though Deuteronomy forbids the intermarriage of Israelites with seven neighboring nations (7:1–4), measures taken in the postexilic community against marriage with Ammonites and Moabites reflect current dangers rather than any explicit prohibition in Torah (cf. Ezra 9:1–2; Neh 13:23–27). An annual tax of a third of a shekel (Neh 10:33 [Eng. trans., 10:32]) and the bringing at fixed times of wood to be burnt on the temple altar (Neh 10:35 [Eng. trans., 10:34]) are other examples of measures with no exact counterpart in the written Torah. Such cases could be multiplied, but the point is clear. The word of the Lord might be settled forever in heaven; but if it was so serve in any practicable way as statutory law in this sublunary sphere of ceaseless change, it would have to be subjected to the processes of modernization, supplementation, and amendment – like any other legal code. The Pharisaic recognition of the “tradition of the elders” of Mark 7, the traditional but unwritten laws of Antiquities 13 (297–298), went a long way toward meeting that need. The various elements of what came to be called “the oral law”39 were diverse indeed: verdicts given by civil judges, not necessarily Pharisaic, in particular cases;40 measures passed by the Sanhedrin 37 

Cf. 1QS V, 9. Cf. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 2.388. The lower age is, however, also found in 1 Chron 23:24, 27 (but contrast v. 3); 2 Chron 31:17. 39 Cf. b. Shabbat 31a. 40 Cf. m. Ketubbot 13:1–9. 38 

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or an assembly of sages,41 or advanced by a single teacher who commanded respect. In the course of time, there would develop both an apologetic by which all the details of the oral law were said to have been given to Moses on Mount Sinai, and conventions of exegesis by which they all could find support in Scripture, either by explicit statement or allusion.42 But neither of these developments should be allowed to conceal the fact that what was frankly conceded to be extrabiblical material43 was treated by the Pharisees as binding law, supplementing and on a par with the written Torah. To supplement the written Torah is an undertaking perilous enough; to revise or alter laws found in the word of the eternal God might seem quite another.44 Actually, in the early period, changes felt to be necessary seem to have been enacted routinely; justification was found simply in the need of the day.45 This must have been the case with such adjustments as were mentioned above from Ezra-Nehemiah as well as that by which it was decided in Maccabean times that fighting in self-defense would have to be permitted on the Sabbath if the nation was to be preserved (1 Macc 2:41). When, however, the need to conform to the word of Torah was felt with increasing strength and rigidity, ingenious circumventions and legal fictions came to be devised.46 In this way, the word (or, as we say, the “letter”) of Torah could be seen to be fulfilled while its apparent impracticabilities were avoided. For our purposes, this brief account of the principles involved in the Pharisaic application of divine law will have to suffice. As a further background to Jesus’ own views, however, something needs to be said of the effects that such an application could potentially have – and, according to the critique of the Synoptics Jesus, did have – on Pharisees’ views of people’s relationship with their Creator. We are, after all, speaking of divine law. If Torah served as the law of the land, the fact remains that God’s will was seen to be expressed in its commands. Submitting to those commands was more than the mark of a conscientious citizen. It meant accepting the yoke of the reign of heaven. It meant loyalty to the covenant established by God with his people Israel. It meant serving God, a service that, at its best, was not to be motivated by fear or constraint, but by love for God with one’s whole heart, soul, and strength. 41  See the discussion of “Halakhic Assemblies” in my Jesus and Scribal Authority, 40–50. 42  Cf. Daube, New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism, 69–70. 43  Note the distinction between the words of Torah and those of the scribes in m. Sanhedrin 11:3; m. Parah 11:5–6; m. Yadayim 3:2. And see especially m. Hagigah 1:8. 44  See the fine discussion in Cohn, “Secularization.” 45  Cf. Urbach, “Derasha,” 166–182. 46  Note, e. g., how the limitations on travel during the Sabbath rest were circumvented in m. Eruvin 5:1–3.



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Such was the ideal. But human nature being what it is, Pharisees fell short of Pharisaic ideals. The Gospel narratives and, to a certain extent, rabbinic literature itself ascribe certain typical failings to Pharisees, certain dangers that may be regarded as inherent in Pharisaism – or, indeed, in any system where conformity with a prescribed code of behavior (or, we may add, of belief) becomes the mark of a righteous person. We may here briefly note four of them. 1. The most obvious peril is that of what we may call “externalism”: a formal, outward compliance with a code while the heart remains uninvolved, complacent, self-seeking, perhaps motivated by a desire for others’ esteem (cf. Mark 7:6; Matt 23:25–28. etc.). This is the “hypocrisy” of the Gospel narratives, the lack of whole-hearted devotion that Jesus brooked neither in the Pharisees nor in his own would-be followers. 2. Where God’s will is thought to lie in conformity with a code of behavior or doctrine, there is the danger of imagining that one has, by so complying, adequately met God’s standards in a way that God himself is all but obliged to acknowledge. The openendedness of the commands for love, mercy, and justice is perhaps forgotten, as well as the unbridgeable chasm between the righteousness of God and human moral strivings. This is the danger of self-sufficiency, the ever-present peril of “trusting in [oneself] that [one] is righteous” (Luke 18:9). 3. This suggests another loss of perspective. When overstepping any detail of a prescribed code is regarded as transgression;47 when, indeed, conformity with seemingly minor matters becomes the mark of those who are serious about their commitment to God, then minor matters may become a major preoccupation, even to the exclusion of the “weightier matters of the law” (cf. Matt 23:23). 4. Finally, when righteousness is measured by faithfulness to a prescribed code of behavior or belief, mortals may presume on the divine prerogative of fixing boundaries between the righteous and the wicked. They may even thank God, as did the Pharisee of the parable, that they belong to the former category and not the latter in an attitude of superiority rather than solidarity with fellow sinners, of contempt rather than compassion (Luke 18:9–14). In the circles of those meticulous about the letter of the law, the friend of tax collectors and prostitutes is seldom welcome (cf. Mark 2:14–17 par.).

47 

Cf. 4 Macc 5:19–21; m. Avot 2:1; 4:2.

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Jesus and the Divine Law When we turn to the Gospels, what is immediately observable is Jesus’ apparent lack of interest in Torah as the law of first-century Jewish Palestine. Texts that might be construed as indicating the contrary are few and may be dealt with quickly. When explaining Moses’ requirement that a divorced woman be given a certificate of divorce, Jesus claims that this was a concession to the hardness of human hearts rather than an expression of the Creator’s will (Mark 10:2– 12 par.). Some would see in his words a basis for justifying laws that, while falling short of the divine ideal, do place some restraint on the ill effects of human sin; a justification, in other words, for weighing and allowing, in the laws of society, the lesser of two evils.48 It is perfectly clear, however, that Jesus’ concern is not to revise or even to account for civil law, but to state unequivocally the absolute demands of God. The pericope in Matthew 17 concerning the temple tax (17:24–27) ought perhaps to be mentioned here, though conclusions are hazardous owing to the uncertainty whether Jesus would even have seen in the tax a requirement of the Mosaic law.49 What can be said is that there is nothing to suggest a sense of obligation toward this tax requirement, whether Torah-based or not: the motivation given for compliance is simply that of avoiding offense. Clearly, there is nothing here to suggest a concern for observance of Torah as the law of the community. The famous logion by which Caesar is to be given his due (Mark 12:17 par.) no doubt does assume an obligation toward civil authorities. Here again, however, we find Jesus’ words are in response to an inquiry; the subject is not central to his own proclamation. And, while the laws of society are dealt with, nothing at all is said about Torah as their foundation. There remains Matthew 23:2–3, where Jesus seems to require obedience to the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees because of the position they occupy on “Moses’ seat.” But such a literal reading cannot reflect Jesus’ (or even Matthew’s) intentions. Elsewhere, he condemns the scribes for “making void the word of God through your tradition which you hand on” (Mark 7:13 par. Matt 15:6). Moreover, whatever we may say of Jesus’ stance with regard to the relevant texts in Scripture, Matthew’s Gospel shows him opposed to (and opposed by) scribes on questions of oaths,50 divorce, Sabbath observance, the washing of hands before eating, and table fellowship 48  Cf. Piper, “Love your Enemies,” 89–99 for a discussion of divorce, the lex talionis, and the use of oaths as serving this purpose. 49  Cf. Banks, Jesus and the Law, 92–94. 50 Cf. Matt 23:16–22 – occurring a few verses after the mention of Pharisees and scribes sitting on “Moses’ seat”!



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with “sinners.” Even here in Matthew 23, the main point of verses 2–3 is not an endorsement of scribal teaching but a denunciation of their practice. Hence, the verses are scarcely admissible as evidence for approval, on Jesus’ part, of the scribal application of divine law. We must therefore be content to say that Jesus shows little interest in the laws by which society is governed; that, in sharp contrast with the Pharisees, he expresses no concern for the Jewish people as a present political entity governed by God’s laws, or, in general, for the implementation of divine law on this level. The negative conclusion is not without interest. The demands of Pharisaism and those of Jesus are at times compared with regard to their practicability, an area where Jesus is given low marks indeed.51 But the comparison is scarcely a just one. The Pharisees dealt with the laws of the Jewish theocracy. If divine law was the base material from which they worked, the divine commands had nonetheless to be rendered concretely and practicably. If there was a danger, it was, as we have seen, that the demands of God be reduced all too neatly to a body of concrete observances to be carried out in a prescribed way. Jesus, on the other hand, while little concerned with the laws of present society, insisted on the absoluteness, the bottomless nature, of God’s demands: absolute love, absolute honesty and purity. Such is the righteousness of the dawning kingdom of heaven, as Jesus proclaims it, and of all who would enter it. For though Jesus was not concerned to apply Pentateuchal law as the basis for society’s rules, he was nonetheless concerned with divine law as an expression of God’s will. Here again, however, differences from the Pharisees may be seen. For the Pharisees, God’s will in a matter was to be found by consulting the relevant statutes of Torah as interpreted by those competent to do so. Though it is often suggested, on the basis of Mark 7:8 and 13, that what provoked Jesus’ opposition was the way in which the scribes had expanded on the provisions of Torah, the root of the ­opposition lay deeper. While Jesus undoubtedly censured scribal expansions (the “tradition of the elders”) as nullifying the “word of God,” his view on the relation between the divine will and the statutes of Torah itself differed from that of the Pharisees. A dialectic was involved in that relationship for which Pharisaism had no place.52 A few examples will make this clear. In the matter of divorce, the Pharisees – who attempted to govern their lives and to interpret God’s will by the terms of the pertinent statutes in Torah – were quite naturally left to debate the meaning of “some indecency,” the motivation for divorce mentioned in the statute of Deuteronomy 51 

52 

Cf. the interesting discussion in Klausner, Jesus, 361–414. Cf. Käsemann, “Problem,” 38, 42.

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24:1–4.53 Here, they thought, must be the key to what did, and what did not, violate the divine will. In Jesus’ discussion of the divine will, however, the scriptural statute is dismissed as irrelevant, a concession to hard hearts. Attention is instead focused on what the creation narrative tells of God’s purposes in making man and woman, and on the effrontery involved when man or woman dissolves what God has united (Mark 10:2–12 par.). Did Jesus then abolish the Mosaic concession of Deuteronomy 24? The question itself, I believe, is misleading.54 On what level are we to conceive it being abolished? On that of civil law? But, as was suggested above, the status of civil law is hardly the issue. Jesus shows no apparent concern that the divine will and purpose in their pristine form be enshrined in the laws of present society; presumably, concessions to human “hardheartedness” have their place in that context. Is the Mosaic concession abolished as a statement of God’s will? The answer must be “Not exactly!” inasmuch as the question suggests that what once represented an adequate fulfillment of the divine will may or may not do so now. For Jesus, divorce, as a concession to hard hearts, can never have been right. Moreover, there is no suggestion in the passage that the relation between divorce and the divine will has ever undergone a change.55 Jesus is thus not declaring the Mosaic provision to be no longer valid, but he is disputing its claim to ever have adequately represented the divine will. He proclaims the divine will with authority, not as something new, not simply as the standard of the new age (though it certainly is that), but as absolute, eternal, the expression of God’s unchanging character and purpose: “what therefore God has joined together, let no mere mortal put asunder.” Again, while Pentateuchal legislation certainly placed an obligation on those who swore an oath to be aware of the force of their words (e. g., Exod 20:7; 23:13; Lev 19:12; Deut 6:13; 10:20), there is nothing that would prepare us for Jesus’ prohibition of oaths (Matt 5:33–37). Here, too, Jesus’ declaration of the will of God is based, not on his reading of the relevant statutes in Torah, but on a consideration of what is consistent with reverence for the divine character. Furthermore, if oaths (inasmuch as they are more than a simple “Yes” or “No”) come “from evil” (or “from the evil one” [Matt 5:37]), then they can never have been satisfactory to God. Hence, Jesus is not declaring that what once was in accordance with the divine will is now no longer so. He is contesting the claim that compliance with Torah’s provisions regarding oaths represents an adequate fulfilling of God’s will. 53 Cf.

m. Gittin 9:10. Cf. Banks, Jesus and the Law, 242. 55  Pace Banks, Jesus and the Law, 150. 54 



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Laws of ritual purity may seem to have taken up an inordinate amount of the Pharisees’ attention. Certainly, the halakhah in this area went far beyond the prescriptions of the written law. The fact remains, however, that Scripture contains a fair amount of legal material on the subject (e. g., Lev 11–15; Num 19), and that the Pharisees were attempting to apply this material to their day. But Jesus shows little interest in these provisions of divine law. It is not simply that he rejects Pharisaic interpretations of the scriptural laws; there is here no evidence of any alternative interpretation of his own.56 Ritual purity, though part of scriptural law, seems to have found no place in Jesus’ declaration of God’s will to his disciples.57 Indeed, what statements there are in the Gospels suggest that true purity and impurity are not related to anything external, but to what is found in the heart (cf. Matt 5:8; 23:25–26; Luke 10:8; 11:37–41). To be sure, the critical logion in Mark 7 is sometimes taken to mean that people are not so much defiled by what enters them as by what proceeds from within. On this understanding, ritual purity (the subject that sparked the debate [7:2]) and laws of forbidden foods (the apparent focus of 7:15) are not rejected, though their importance is certainly relativized. On the other hand, the interpretation given to the logion in Mark 7:18–23 spells out why food cannot really cause defilement.58 In the parenthetical comment at the close of Mark 7:19, Jesus’ words are taken to be a declaration that all foods are clean. Romans 14:14 seems to indicate that Paul understood them that way as well.59 And, as noted above, neither ritual purity nor food laws have any place in Jesus’ proclamation of the righteousness of God’s kingdom. Are these laws abolished? Apparently not. That nothing entering a mouth causes defilement is explained, not by any change brought about by the coming of the kingdom, but by the rather more mundane facts of what happens – and has always happened – to food once it has entered the human body. Jesus is not declaring that statutes that once were valid statements of God’s will have now been set aside. And there is no reference here to a new 56 

Cf. Kümmel, “Traditionsgedanke,” 125. It is worth noting that, as the Gospels portray Jesus’ own activities, considerations of ritual purity are repeatedly disregarded (Mark 1:41 par.; 5:25–34 par.; 5:38–43 par.). 58  Cf. Banks, Jesus and the Law, 141. 59  Clearly, others in the early church did not, however; and had Jesus ever eaten pork chops or a ham sandwich, that would certainly have aroused sufficient offense to warrant mention in the Gospels. His menu, at least, appears to have been unexceptionable by current standards; and since Mark 7:15 par. itself is ambiguous, debates about meals among Jesus’ post-Easter disciples are understandable. Still, in light of the saying behind Mark 7:15 (and other texts) and the complete absence, in the Jesus tradition, of concern for any purity but that of the heart, the Markan/Pauline understanding was at least as open an option for Jesus’ followers as the more conservative approach taken by others. 57 

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state of affairs. His polemic is directed rather against those who find the divine will in casuistically implementing laws of ritual purity. With regard to the Sabbath, the Pharisees were concerned to spell out precisely what should be included, and what should not, in Scripture’s prohibition of “work” on the seventh day (Exod 20:8–11). Naturally, opinions differed as to what should be classified as work and thus come under the prohibition. Once again, however, the conflicts with Jesus do not involve various interpretations of the terms of scriptural statutes, but the very propriety of equating the results of such interpretations with the divine will. Here, at least in the gospel tradition, the authority of Jesus to interpret the divine law is made explicit: “The Son of man is lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28 par.).60 Yet here, too, Jesus’ interpretation turns out not to involve the proclamation of a new state of affairs or the abolishing of old laws. Rather, Jesus is concerned with God the Creator’s unchanging purpose (“The Sabbath was made for humankind” [Mark 2:27]) as well as with the elementary perception of need and the requirements of compassion. Without worrying whether “work” is involved, Jesus observes that people (naturally!) pull up an animal from a well on the Sabbath; surely, then, healing a human being must also be the right thing to do (Matt 12:11–12; Luke 14:5)! If David and his men ate the consecrated bread (quite unlawfully) when they were hungry, surely the disciples should not be condemned for picking ears of grain (Mark 2:25–26 par.)! And surely it must be permissible to “do good” on the Sabbath and not to “do evil” (Mark 3:4 par.) – a criterion, it must be said, quite independent of the question whether or not “work” is being done. The law, then, is not abolished, but the Pharisaic attempt to regulate conduct by casuistically interpreting its terms is found to distort the will of God. The phrases “You have heard that it was said” and “but I say to you” (Matt 5:21–48) have been compared with similar expressions in rabbinic literature by which a possible reading of Scripture is introduced only to be rejected in favor of a different interpretation.61 This could apply to the antitheses concerning murder (Matt 5:21–22) and adultery (5:27–28): not the literal acts alone, but also outbursts of anger, expressions of contempt, and looks of lust come under the prohibitions. But the pattern breaks down 60  The verse does not, however, follow smoothly after 2:27, and is perhaps to be taken as the evangelist’s (or the tradition’s) way of pointing out the implications of what has preceded. See the commentaries, and note the parallel problem in Mark 2:10. Note also the christological argument introduced in Matt 12:5–6. 61  For literature, see Guelich, “Antitheses,” 455 n. 1. For discussion of the much debated question whether the antithetical form in Matt 5:21–48 is traditional or redactional, see also Strecker, “Antithesen,” 36–72. The question need not be raised here. What is important for our purposes is simply that the second part of the antitheses reflects the teaching of Jesus.



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in the cases of divorce, oaths, and the lex talionis. In these latter cases, Jesus does not present the demands of God by penetrating more deeply into what the quoted legal texts can be construed as requiring. Instead, he goes beyond their requirements, and prohibits what scriptural law permitted. In the final antithesis in Matthew 5, where love for enemies is enjoined, the demand is again introduced, not as an interpretation of a scriptural law, but as a demand of Jesus based on the undiscriminating bounty of God the Creator. Is the Mosaic law abolished here? Again, the question is misleading. God’s will has not changed. Outbursts of anger, looks of lust, the hardheartedness that led to divorce, the dishonesty that led to the need for oaths, the desire for revenge that had to be placed within the limits of the lex talionis, the hatred toward enemies that is so contrary to God’s nature: these must always have been wrong in God’s eyes. Thus, Jesus contests the belief that compliance with the terms of Torah, understood as a code of prescribed observances, represents an adequate fulfilling of God’s will. Against this view, he presents God’s demands – the eternal demands of God’s rule – absolutely, unconditionally, uncompromisingly.

Conclusions Even a brief sketch such as this suggests that there is a fundamental difference between the ways Jesus and the Pharisees approached and applied the divine law. Pharisaism arose in a context where Torah served as community law. The statutes of that law were interpreted, applied, and, when necessary, supplemented and modified by competent authorities. The result represented not simply the duty of citizens toward the society to which they belonged, but the obligation of the faithful Jew toward the God who had chosen Israel as his people. By way of contrast, Jesus shows little interest in applying the statutes of Torah as regulations of current society. But that is not all. In a variety of instances, he does not find the will of God in any direct way by interpreting the terms of the pertinent scriptural statutes. Whereas, for the Pharisees, the terms of Torah’s ordinances were the inevitable starting point in the search for God’s will, for Jesus, interpretation of the terms of the statutes by themselves often leads to conclusions opposed to the divine will.62 That will was determined by other considerations. We conclude with a brief summary of what some of those considerations seem to have been.

62 

Cf. Schoeps, “Gesetz,” 58–59.

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1. Certainly, Scripture remains a factor. Jesus’ argument that divorce goes against the Creator’s will in spite of what is said in the statute of Deuteron­ omy is supported by quotations from Genesis. Above all, Torah’s commands to love God with all one’s heart, soul, and strength, and one’s neighbor as oneself are cited as the sum and substance of the divine will revealed in “the law and the prophets” (Mark 12:28–34 par.). 2. Though the Pharisees found the divine will in the correct construal of the precise wording of Torah’s statutes, Jesus’ opposition to their views never takes the form of contesting their construals or offering alternative interpretations of the relevant terms. Reference is rather made to the character and purpose of God. When the character of God militates against a particular understanding of Torah’s statutes, or when it implicitly demands conduct going beyond the requirements of the law, it is, as we have seen, the character of God that is decisive. 3. Jesus assumes the right to interpret the divine will authoritatively.63 Moreover, he frequently demands to be followed in a discipleship that supplants the claims of all other ties. The righteousness that characterizes God’s kingdom, as Jesus proclaims it, goes far beyond conformity to a number of Torah’s statutes. In the application of such statutes to existing, less than ideal conditions, Jesus shows little or no interest: God’s kingdom has no place for concessions to human sinfulness. God requires something better of his children. 4. Jesus does not find the will of God to rest in compliance with a prescribed code of behavior. He does not interpret the provisions of Torah along those lines, and his own demands are too restricted in subject matter and too open-ended in what they require to serve as the basis for a comprehensive code of concrete prescriptions. 5. Positively, Jesus’ proclamation of the will of God places great emphasis on the heart: on purity of heart and mind (Matt 5:8, 28); on forgiveness that comes from the heart (Matt 18:35); on affections that, together with one’s treasures, are to be fixed in heaven rather than on earth (Matt 6:21 par.); on love for God with one’s whole heart (Mark 12:28–34 par.). Evil words and deeds are said to spring from the heart (Matt 12:34–35 par.; Mark 7:21–23 par.), while Jesus reserves his harshest criticism for the hardness of heart that opposes God’s work and his offer of salvation. It is, of course, assumed that the committed heart will express itself in deeds of love and service for God and one’s fellow human beings (Luke 10:25–37; Matt 25:31–46), in humble receptiveness toward the divine message (Mark 10:15 par.), and in 63 

Cf. Schoeps, “Gesetz,” 46.



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faithful following of Jesus (Mark 8:34–38): those who are good do good (Matt 12:35). But while the general contours of such a life are clear enough, details are not spelled out. We are clearly not dealing with a life lived by interpreting and implementing the precise wording of divine statutes. Such a life lacks the concrete formulas and handy prescriptions by which people may prefer to be guided and against which they may measure their achievement. Fervent moral strivings are indeed called for, but they are to be performed as one’s grateful response within a familial framework established at God’s initiative. In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ followers are said to be, not mere “servants,” but “friends” (15:15). More suited still is the designation “children of your Father who is in heaven” (Matt 5:45), since their ethos is marked less by adherence to rules than by childlike openness, guilelessness, confidence, and love. Bibliography Alon, Gedalyahu. Jews, Judaism and the Classical World: Studies in Jewish History in the Times of the Second Temple and Talmud. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1977. Atkinson, K. M. T. “Athenian Legislative Procedure and Revision of Laws.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 23 (1939): 107–150. Banks, Robert J. Jesus and the Law in the Synoptic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Bickerman, Elias. “La charte séleucide de Jérusalem.” In Bickerman, Studies in Jewish and Christian History, Vol. 2. Leiden: Brill, 1980, 44–85. – From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees: Foundations of Post-biblical Judaism. New York: Schocken, 1962. Cohn, Haim H. “Secularization of Divine Law.” Scripta Hierosolymitana 16 (1966): 55–103. Daube, David. The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism. London: Athlone, 1956. Freund, Paul A. “An Analysis of Judicial Reasoning.” In Law and Philosophy: A Symposium, edited by Sidney Hook. New York: New York University Press, 1964, 282–289. Guelich, Robert A. “The Antitheses of Matthew V. 21–48: Traditional and/or Redactional?” New Testament Studies 22 (1976): 444–457. Jones, J. Walter. The Law and Legal Theory of the Greeks. Oxford: Clarendon, 1956. Käsemann, Ernst. “The Problem of the Historical Jesus.” In Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes. London: SCM, 1964, 15–47. Klausner, Joseph. Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching. New York: Macmillan, 1929. Kümmel, Werner Georg. “Jesus und der jüdische Traditionsgedanke.” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 33 (1934): 105–130. Neusner, Jacob. “The Fellowship (havurah) in the Second Jewish Commonwealth.” Harvard Theological Review 53 (1960): 125–142. Oliver, James Henry. The Athenian Expounders of the Sacred and Ancestral Law. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1950.

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Piper, John. “Love your Enemies”: Jesus’ Love Command in the Synoptic Gospels and in the Early Christian Paraenesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Renaud, Bernard. “La loi et les lois dan les livres de Maccabées.” Revue biblique 68 (1961): 39–67. Sanders, E. P. Paul and Palestinian Judaism. London: SCM, 1977. Schoeps, Hans Joachim. “Jesus und das jüdische Gesetz.” In Schoeps, Studien zur unbekannten Religions- und Geistesgeschichte. Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1963, 41–61. Schürer, Emil. The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 BC– AD 135). Vols. 1–3. Revised and edited by Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, Matthew Black, and Martin Goodman. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973–1987. Stern, Menahem. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism. Vols. 1–2. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974–1980. Strecker, Georg. “Die Antithesen der Bergpredigt (Mt 5:21–48 par).” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 69 (1978): 36–72. Tcherikover, Victor. Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews. New York: Atheneum, 1970. Urbach, Ephraim E. “Derasha as a Basis of the Halakha and the Problem of the Soferim” (Hebrew). Tarbiz 27 (1958): 166–182. – The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, Vol. 1. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975. Vaux, Roland de. Ancient Israel. Vols. 1–2. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965. Westerholm, Stephen. Jesus and Scribal Authority. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1978.

Chapter 9

Hearing the Gospels of Matthew and Mark In this paper I would like to reflect upon, or at least raise questions about, the nature and purpose of Mark’s and Matthew’s Gospels. But to keep my reflections grounded in textual reality, I take as my starting-point a familiar narrative found only in our two Gospels, commonly referred to as the “call” of Peter and Andrew, James and John. I assume Markan priority throughout and quote here the version in Mark 1:16–20. The minor variations in Matthew need not detain us here. As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea – for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.1

And so, to my question: What do our evangelists expect, or want, their listeners to hear in this text?

A Story from the Past I begin with what is most obvious, but perhaps for that reason most easily overlooked. Our evangelists tell, and want their listeners to hear, a story belonging irretrievably to the past. Apart from one verb in the historical present in Matthew’s account, the tenses of verbs in the indicative mood are all past, usually aorist. Whatever substance there may be to scholarly talk of a historical consciousness peculiar to the modern West, first-century listeners to our Gospels were very aware that Jesus once “passed along the Sea of Galilee” but did so no more. Even first-century listeners knew, and our evangelists wanted them to know, that what happened in this story happened once and – as related in this story – does not happen again. The same can be said of the entire content of Mark and Matthew: our evangelists are keenly aware of the pastness of the story they tell and of significant differences between the time of their telling, on the one hand, 1 

Biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version.

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and their own – and their readers’ – present, on the other.2 Then the disciples of Jesus could hardly be expected to fast, any more than wedding guests fast in the presence of the bridegroom; now, with the bridegroom gone, there is no hindrance to fasting (Mark 2:18–20 par. Matt 9:14–15). Then the Son of Man was in their midst; now they are like servants whose master has gone on a journey, leaving each with a task to perform and a charge to keep watch (Mark 13:33–37; Matt 24:45–51). Then Jesus confined the focus of his activities to the Jewish people; now the gospel is going out to all the world (Mark 7:27 and 13:10; 14:9; Matt 15:25 and 28:19). Then his closest followers repeatedly demonstrated their lack of faith (so, typically, Mark), or little faith (so, typically, Matthew), and an almost uncanny knack for misapprehending their Master’s words (so Matthew,3 Mark, Luke, and John); now they are pillars in his church. Whatever its present significance, the story of our Gospels is told throughout as belonging to the past. Remarkably, too, our evangelists almost never interrupt their narrative to address their readers directly with a word about its present significance. The exceptions are so few that they may be listed here. 1. In Mark 7:19, after Jesus’ explanation (v. 18) to his disciples that “whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile,” we read, “Thus he declared all foods clean.” (As is well known, Matthew lacks a parallel to this comment.) This English rendering (that of the NRSV) is actually a good deal clearer than the Greek; but a reader attentive to the masculine gender of καθαρίζων will presumably realize that the subject must be Jesus, and that we have here not a continuation of Jesus’ speech but a comment about its importance. It is a very telling and significant comment indeed; but for our purposes, what is most remarkable about it is its rarity. 2. In Mark 13:14, Jesus’ words “When you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be” are followed by a parenthetical comment, “Let the reader understand.” The latter words are almost certainly to be taken as an interruption of the narrative coming from the narrator himself (who is writing for readers), not as spoken by Jesus within the narrative (where he addresses only hearers).4 Matthew (24:15) reads somewhat differently: “When you see the desolating sacrilege standing in the holy place, as was spoken of by the prophet Daniel (let the reader understand) …” Here it is probably the words of the prophet Daniel that readers are to understand, 2  Cf. Roloff, Kerygma; Stanton, Preaching; Lemcio, Past of Jesus; Moule, “Function”; Gerhardsson, Origins, 43–46. 3  It is true that a measure of understanding is attributed to the disciples in Matthew; cf. Luz, Studies, 121–123 (following Gerhard Barth). Note, nonetheless, Matt 15:16; 16:9. 4 The alternative would be that Jesus refers to the reader of Daniel; so Matthew appears to have understood the text, but it is not a self-evident reading of Mark.



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and Daniel’s readers include Jesus’ disciples.5 Hence, in Matthew the parenthetical remark can, and probably should, be understood as words spoken by Jesus to his disciples on the Mount of Olives. Matthew thus lacks Mark’s explicit address to his readers. Before leaving Mark 13, I should mention briefly verse 37, remarkable in its singularity inasmuch as Mark’s reader is directly addressed, but not by the narrator, and without any interruption to the narrative. As in Deuteronomy 29:14–15, where Moses is (uniquely) permitted to speak not only to those Israelites assembled with him beyond the Jordan in the land of Moab, but also to “those who are not here with us today,” so according to Mark 13:37, Jesus concludes his words to Peter, James, John, and Andrew with an admonition explicitly directed, not only to those present with him on the Mount of Olives, but to “all”: “And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” For once, readers are left without the “But I didn’t realize …” excuse for failing to apply to themselves what Jesus says to his disciples. Again, Matthew has no parallel. 3. At the beginning of Mark 2 and Matthew 9, Jesus provokes the consternation of certain scribes by telling a paralyzed man that his sins are forgiven. I pick up the narrative at Mark 2:9, with Jesus speaking: “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” – he spoke to the paralytic – “I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” (2:9–11)

There are no significant differences in Matthew (9:5–6). As the NRSV construes the passage, all the words I have cited are spoken by Jesus apart from the evangelist’s stage cue, “he spoke to the paralytic.” I think this the most likely reading of the passage, but some scholars ascribe more than a stage cue to the evangelist. On their reading, it is the evangelist who addresses his readers at the beginning of that particular sentence by saying, “But so that you [i. e., my readers] may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he spoke to the paralytic …” If this reading is correct we have here another exceptional case in which the evangelist explicitly draws out the significance of his narrative for his readers. But I think the reading unlikely.6 4. It has sometimes been suggested that Mark 2:28 (“So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath”), which lacks a parallel in the other Synoptics, is the evangelist’s comment on the implications of the preceding episode.7 5 

Cf. Davies and Allison, Matthew, 3.346; Luz, Matthew 21–28, 195. So also Marcus, Mark 1–8, 218, contra, e. g., Cranfield, Saint Mark, 100. 7 Cranfield, Saint Mark, 118. Cf. Hooker, Saint Mark,105. 6 

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But it is again more likely that the words are intended as a continuation of Jesus’ speech. I make no claims to exhaustiveness – my point would not be affected if there were another case or two – but to the best of my knowledge, these are all the occasions in which either or both of our evangelists interrupt (or may interrupt) their narrative with a direct address to their readers that is intended to indicate the present significance of their story. To be sure, they elsewhere interrupt their story for purposes of clarification (e. g., of Jewish washings in Mark 7:3–4) or identification (e. g., that Simon of Cyrene was the father of Alexander and Rufus [Mark 15:21]). And Matthew in particular is wont to interrupt his narrative of the past to point out that Scripture has found its fulfillment in what he tells. But my point remains: Mark and Matthew almost never depart from their narrative of the past to comment on its significance for the present or to exhort their readers to think or believe or behave in appropriate ways. Luke’s Gospel proceeds along similar lines, but at least Luke introduces the whole by telling his reader what to make of what follows (1:1–4). The Fourth Evangelist makes the intended point of his Gospel explicit at the end (20:30–31). Mark and Matthew never do. Now there is no doubt that both evangelists see their narratives as having present implications. But the operative word is “implications.” Whatever pastoral or political or evangelical purposes our evangelists may have entertained, they remain implicit; the confines of a narrative of the past are respected. Even the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:3–7:27), for all its pressing importance for every follower of Jesus, is introduced as words spoken at a particular place and time to a particular group of people, and it ends by noting their response, and where Jesus went once he finished addressing them. Clearly, here, as throughout both Gospels, the evangelists have provided – perhaps intentionally provided – raw material on which sermons could be based. The assemblies among which the Gospels were written undoubtedly featured such sermons. Indeed, given that our evangelists can hardly have been backbenchers in their assemblies, we may well imagine that they themselves preached many of these sermons. But not here. Here they tell a story; they do not preach.8 8  Cf. Gerhardsson, Origins, 67: “The mystery of Jesus is not presented here in the framework of proclamation, teaching, or admonition. We find here that a number of independent words and narratives have been brought together to form an account of a bygone period in the history of salvation. The fact that there is an edifying intention in the evangelists’ presentation in no way belies this assertion.” Martin Hengel sees in Mark’s Gospel an inseparable combination of narrative and proclamation (Four Gospels, 86); this is true, but only to the extent that the narrative itself is understood as proclamation, i. e., as the announcing (κηρύσσειν) of good news (τὸ εὐαγγέλιον). Mark regularly uses the verb κηρύσσειν for the dissemination of the gospel (1:14; 13:10; 14:9), and (as we shall note below) no doubt understood his Gospel as



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Much, no doubt, could be said on the matter. For the moment, I offer four reflections. 1. In part there is, I suspect, a straightforward, almost technical explanation for this procedure. Years ago, Birger Gerhardsson challenged one of the fundamental assumptions of many form critics when he insisted that early Christian paraenesis could not have been the primary setting in which the Jesus tradition was passed on. Allusions to the tradition are frequent in such material; indeed, paraenetic material is “full of borrowed motifs, ideas, words, and phrases.” But explicit quotations are almost never found.9 In paraenesis, the Jesus’ tradition was applied; but, as was common in the ancient world, so in the early church the transmission of foundational texts was distinct from the exercise of commenting on it or drawing out its practical implications.10 That observation is confirmed both in the way Paul speaks of “delivering” to his churches Jesus traditions that he himself had “received” (1 Cor 11:23; 15:3),11 and in a number of features of the gospel tradition itself. Note, for example, that sayings of Jesus making very different points were at times assembled in a block for mnemonic purposes by a catchword principle (i. e., because they share a key word in common).12 The immediate purpose of such a collection can only be to facilitate its recollection and preservation, leaving the catechist or paraeneticist to distinguish and apply the points made by juxtaposed sayings whose commonality is verbal, not thematic. Or consider the so-called “floating” logia of the gospel tradition,13 sayings that have been detached from the context essential for their meaning and preserved (unfortunately, we may think) independently of any context merely because sayings of Jesus demand preservation:14 it was left to the evangelists to figure out an appropriate point and context for a written equivalent of its oral proclamation. The point here is that his written account of the past is not accompanied by any such exhortation as “Repent and believe the gospel” (cf. 1:15; Acts 2:38; 13:38–41; 2 Cor 5:20, etc.), though exhortation along these lines seems inevitable when the gospel is proclaimed orally. Hengel himself appears sensitive to this point: “the story told in it [i. e., in Mark’s Gospel] calls hearers to belief in the person who is described in it, Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God, and thus to eternal life; in other words it seeks to be wholly and completely a message of salvation” (91). Note: it is the story itself, not the story-teller, that calls for faith. 9 Gerhardsson, Origins, 38–39; also 67–68. For the isolation of the gospel tradition’s transmission from other activities, see also Gerhardsson’s article “Evangelientradition,” 79–102; Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 278–279. 10 Gerhardsson, Origins, 20. 11 Gerhardsson, Origins, 33–41. 12 Cf. Bultmann, Synoptic Tradition, 325–326, citing Mark 4:31 ff.; 9:33 ff.; Luke 11:34–36. 13  See Lindeskog, “Logia-Studien,” 129–189. 14  Samuel Byrskog, noting the importance placed on Jesus as the exclusive teaching authority in Matthew’s Gospel, concludes that its community, like other groups that

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sayings like “A disciple is not above the teacher”15 or “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered”16 or “To those who have, more will be given”17or “If one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.”18 Or note the preservation of sayings whose obscurity hardly lends itself to any immediate paraenetic purpose, but which nonetheless were preserved because, if Jesus’ mother could treasure in her heart words she did not understand (Luke 2:50–51; cf. 2:19), then – doggonit – his followers would do the same. I am thinking of texts like the impenetrable Matthew 11:12 (“The kingdom of heaven βιάζεται [whatever that means], and βιασταὶ [whoever they are] ἁρπάζουσιν αὐτήν [your guess is as good as mine]”),19 or Mark 9:49 (“Everyone will be salted with fire”).20 No doubt we have all tried our hand at explaining such texts; but can you imagine anyone trying to preach them with conviction? If, then, the transmission of the Jesus tradition was carried on independently of other activities in the early church, it is perhaps not surprising that, in what is in some ways the culmination of that process, the composition of written Gospels, the distinction between passing on the material and its homiletic application is maintained. To be sure, the activity of our evangelists in shaping their narrative goes far beyond the simple collecting and recording of traditional materials. Nonetheless, the preservation of tradition undoubtedly remains part of their agenda. It is, after all, not likely to be coincidental that our Gospels were written at roughly the same time as the generation that witnessed Jesus’ activities was passing away.21 2. Again, lest what is self-evident should be overlooked because not stated, let it be said that our evangelists obviously thought that the story of Jesus was worth telling for its own sake. That, after all, is what they have done. Of course, individual texts can be found in which indirect reference to contemporary concerns seems plausible, perhaps probable, maybe virtually certain. But even if we could be certain that such references were intended by the evangelists, it remains the case that they chose to keep them oblique; and their occurrence, in the context of the Gospels as a whole, is sporadic grew up around prophets and teachers, “cherished Jesus’ teaching, life, and person for their own sakes” (Teacher, 400). That must be right. 15  Note the different constructions put on these (or similar) words in Matt 10:24–25; Luke 6:40; John 13:13–16; 15:20. 16  Compare Matt 10:26 + Mark 4:22 + Luke 8:17 + 12:2. 17  Compare Matt 13:12 + 25:29 + Mark 4:25 + Luke 8:19 + 19:26. 18  Compare Matt 15:14 + Luke 6:39. 19  Cf. Manson, Jesus the Messiah, 28. 20  For the phenomenon of transmitting texts whose meaning has been forgotten or wording damaged, see Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, 129–130. 21  Cf. Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 7, 308–310.



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at best. It seems safe to say that, had the primary purpose of our evangelists been to address specific situations in particular communities, the results would have looked quite different from our Gospels. The evangelists, it appears, were not to be distracted from the fundamental task of telling the story of Jesus – for the obvious reason that, in their minds, it had decisively altered the situation in which they and their readers were living.22 Whatever contemporary issues within Christian communities required addressing were, for the moment, outweighed in importance by the task of retelling the unsubstitutable story on which the communities themselves were founded. 3. It is, of course, in the extended discourses of Jesus that we are least aware of the distinction between the pastness of his activities and the present of the readers.23 Such discourses are much more prominent in Matthew than in Mark. Furthermore, Matthew typically abbreviates Mark’s stories, omitting many of the latter’s circumstantial details, thus highlighting what is typical and essential (and thus of ongoing significance) rather than what is distinctive (and therefore confined to the past) about each narrative.24 As a result, it is, I think, true to say that the reader of Mark is more conscious throughout of the pastness of the narrative than the reader of Matthew. But Matthew, too, remains a narrative of the past. 4. A final observation on this point merits further reflection, though here it must remain simply an observation. All that has been said so far of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew could be said of the narrative of the Pentateuch as well, or of the Deuteronomistic History. At many points, the stories of Israel’s patriarchs permit reading on more than one level; but they are told as a simple narrative of the past. The Moses of Deuteronomy undoubtedly addresses later generations of his people, but – apart from 29:15 – not in the narrative itself. Few biblical writers are as inclined to preach as the Deuteronomistic Historian; but for the most part he does his preaching through the mouths of characters in his story. These narratives, too, tell a story that

22 

Cf. Collins, Beginning, 21–23. Luz (Matthew 1–7, 12) proposes that Jesus’ discourses in Matthew are “spoken directly to the readers and are Jesus’ direct commandment to them.” This, to my mind, captures but exaggerates an important point. The exaggeration is perhaps most evident in 10:5–6, a command pertinent to Jesus’ hearers, but one that Matthew clearly sees as superseded by 28:18–20. Indeed, one can put the point more broadly (as Luz himself does, 146): “the mission discourse is remarkable for its strange lack of concern about the time to which it applies,” as it mixes without comment commands directly appropriate only in their narratival setting with others that seem directly appropriate only to the post-Easter community. Again, we must conclude that addressing the present was not Matthew’s primary concern. 24  Cf. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 17, 22. 23 Ulrich

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fundamentally shapes the world of their readers; but readers are similarly left to draw out the implications themselves.25

An Exemplary Narrative? So Mark and Matthew tell, and expect hearers to hear, a story of the past. But moralists of all ages have told stories of the past in the expectation that hearers will be inspired to imitate the exemplary behavior of their protagonists. Such expectations were commonly entertained by writers of ancient biographies.26 Without reopening the vexed question of genre here, we may nonetheless ask: Did Mark and Matthew write with this intention in mind? In the case of the narrative with which I began, the answer is undoubtedly yes. It is, of course, with the disciples that the first readers of the Gospels would most naturally have identified. And in this story, prospective disciples respond to Jesus’ call with full and immediate obedience, rooted – it could not be otherwise – in unquestioning faith in the one who calls them. Such faith in Jesus and obedience to his word – illustrated again when Jesus calls Levi/Matthew a little later in the Gospels (Mark 2:14 par. Matt 9:9) – all readers of the Gospels ought to imitate. So our evangelists undoubtedly believed. Problems arise, however, when we attempt to generalize on the basis of this particular story. In neither Mark nor Matthew is it easy to find other instances in which the behavior of the disciples can be deemed exemplary. Peter’s confession of Jesus as Christ comes to mind (Mark 8:29 par. Matt 16:16), though its impact for this purpose is offset when he immediately thereafter is rebuked for setting his mind on human, not divine, things (Mark 8:32–33 par. Matt 16:22–23). After the young man who will forever bear the sobriquet “the rich young ruler” sorrowfully declines Jesus’ summons to discipleship, Peter observes that he and his cohorts, for their part, have left all and followed Jesus (Mark 10:28 par. Matt 19:27). The content of the claim, if not its making, merits imitation. But, generally, the disciples are a dull and doubting lot whose behavior calls rather for Jesus’ exemplary patience than for imitation by others. Is the story of Jesus himself, then, told to inspire imitation? In some ways, yes; but much too much is made, in both Mark and Matthew, of Jesus’ utter uniqueness to make this a dominant motif.27 Certainly, all 25  Ulrich Luz speaks of the Gospels as telling a “‘foundation story’ that transcends the time difference” between the past that is recorded and the readers’ present (Commentary 1–7, 11). 26  Cf. Aune, Environment, 36. 27  Cf. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 14.



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should be compassionate as Jesus is seen to be compassionate. And hearers of the written Gospels are undoubtedly meant to be summoned, as Jesus’ hearers in the Gospels are summoned, to take up their cross and follow him (Mark 8:34 par. Matt 16:24); to be prepared to live without the comforts of home, as he had nowhere to lay his head (Matt 8:20); to endure the same kind of abuse he endured (Matt 10:24–25); to live to serve others as he came, not to be served, but to serve (Mark 10:45 par Matt 20:28). But even this last text, as explicit a call to the imitation of Jesus as any in the Gospels, continues by noting that the Son of Man uniquely gave his life “a ransom for many.” Imitation only goes so far. Mark’s Jesus is the mysterious and powerful Son of God, whose epiphany causes demons and disciples alike to quake (1:24; 4:41; 6:49–50; 9:6). Matthew’s Gospel begins with a baby worshiped by magi and ends with the Lord of heaven and earth worshiped by disciples (2:11; 28:9, 17). On the whole, the story of Jesus in the Gospels seems intended to inspire faith, allegiance, obedience, and worship more than imitation.

A “Transparent” Narrative? Returning to the narrative with which we began, we may well think that hearers of the Gospels are not simply invited to imitate those who left all and followed Jesus, but – if we may assume that they belong to communities of Jesus’ followers – to recognize something of themselves and their own experience in the story of those who first followed Jesus. Jesus, we are told, “called” James and John (Mark 1:20 par. Matt 4:21). The term is a common and significant one in early Christian writings. Paul writes to those “called to be saints” (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:2), or, simply, “the called” (1 Cor 1:24). His readers are to live in a way “worthy” of their “calling” (1 Thess 2:12; cf. Eph 4:1). They are to note the low standing in society from which they were drawn when they were “called” (1 Cor 1:26), and to be content to remain in the standing in which they found themselves when “called” (1 Cor 7:17–24). “The one who calls” them (1 Thess 5:24; cf. Gal 1:6; 5:8) is, of course, God, and it is to God’s “kingdom and glory” that God calls them (1 Thess 2:12; cf. 1 Cor 1:9). So far Paul. But the readers of the letter to the Hebrews are also “partners in a heavenly calling” (3:1). Those of 1 Peter have been “called” by God “out of darkness into his marvelous light” (2:9); and they are reminded, “As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct” (1:15). Jude, too, addresses those who are “called” (Jude 1). Nor is the language of “calling” in these texts an empty metaphor. As the evangelists tell the story, we are surely not to imagine that Peter and Andrew, James and John, Levi or Matthew would have abandoned all they

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owned and all they were doing at the “call” of Jesus unless they had heard, in that call, a summons with divine force, a divine imperative – in effect, the call of God.28 But Paul makes precisely this point when he speaks both of those who proclaimed and of those who responded to the Christian gospel. Including himself in the former, he writes that “God is making his appeal through us,” so that “we” and God are co-workers (2 Cor 5:20; 6:1). According to 2 Thessalonians 2:14, God “calls” people precisely “through our proclamation” of the gospel. The Thessalonians themselves, Paul claims, were alert to this dimension of his message: “We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers” (1 Thess 2:13). His words reflect, of course, his own perception of the matter; but, given the response, it must have corresponded to the perception and experience of his readers as well. The communities that first heard the Gospels of Mark and Matthew were no different; inevitably, then, they would have recognized something of their own experience in the “call” of the first disciples. And not, of course, only there. Ulrich Luz speaks of “transparent” narratives in Matthew’s Gospel (and also in Mark’s), in which hearers can readily identify their own experience.29 In the many petitioners who bring their needs to Jesus and find relief, hearers are intended to see parallels in their own lives.30 As Günther Bornkamm famously demonstrated years ago, readers of Matthew’s Gospel are meant to see themselves in the disciples who follow Jesus into a boat, discover themselves in the midst of a storm, respond very humanly with a fear that overwhelms their faith, but find the power of Jesus more than adequate to bring them to safety.31 And here there is a point even to the dullness and weakness of the disciples, and their subsequent experience of Jesus’ patience and forgiveness, as readers are prompted to personal reminiscence, ruefulness, and gratitude. In short, at numerous points the narratives of the Gospel are meant to be heard on more than one level: as stories of the past in which hearers in the present can nonetheless recognize something of their own experience.32 28  Marcus (Mark 1–8, 181), noting that the verb “call” is used in Deutero-Isaiah in passages that speak of God’s commissioning of Israel (41:9; 42:6, etc.), proposes that in our passage too “the call of God undergirds the call of Jesus.” Cf. also Hengel, Charismatic Leader, 71–72. In any case, the use of the verb without further definition suggests that the term carries with it something of the technical sense of a summons to faith in, or discipleship of, Jesus. 29 Luz, Matthew 1–7, 42; Studies, 236, 371–372, etc. 30 Luz, Matthew 1–7, 17. 31  Bornkamm, “Stilling,” 52–57, on Matt 8:23–27. 32  Cf. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 11.



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At numerous points – but by no means all. As noted above, even when the story of the past invites present application, it remains, in its telling, exclusively a story of the past; hearers are left to make what connections they will to their own lives. And only the most resolute allegorizers, whether of the third century or the twenty-first, can find a direct application to the present in every detail of the Gospels. Much is told, purely and simply, because it had become a fixed part of the story: from John the Baptizer, clothed with camel’s hair and preparing the way of the Lord (Mark 1:2–8; Matt 3:1–12), to the woman whose costly ointment prepared Jesus for his burial, and whose story is to be included whenever the gospel is told (Mark 14:3–9; Matt 26:6–13). Present need or application did not, after all, determine the limits of what was remembered and preserved.

Indications of the Evangelists’ Intentions To this point, I have considered aspects of the Gospels that seem to me, as they have seemed to many others, to suggest something of the way the evangelists intended their narratives to be heard. I want to turn now to the text in each of our Gospels where our evangelists’ intentions appear to be most clearly in evidence: the opening verse of the Gospel of Mark, and the conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel. I begin with a series of observations on Mark 1:1 (“The beginning of the gospel [NRSV: “good news”] of Jesus Christ” [with or without “the Son of God”]). No claim to originality accompanies these observations: since the influential work of Willi Marxsen,33 there is widespread agreement among scholars on a number of basic points. 1. Though Mark 1:1 played a crucial role in the process by which the word “gospel” came to mean a written account of Jesus’ life, for our evangelist himself, as elsewhere in early Christian writings, the term refers to the basic Christian message, hitherto the subject of oral proclamation. 2. To Mark, then, we may attribute the innovations of using the term for a written “telling” of the gospel, and for seeing the term as an appropriate designation for a consecutive account of the ministry of Jesus as a whole – without suggesting that the term yet means “a written account of the ministry of Jesus.” 3. But Mark himself has Jesus going about Galilee, proclaiming the gospel and summoning people to believe it (1:14–15). The gospel that Jesus pro33 Marxsen,

Mark the Evangelist.

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claims can hardly be a consecutive account of his life, though – since the same word is used of Mark’s text and of Jesus’ message – its essence must be the same; an essence shared, moreover, with the basic message of the early church (cf. 13:10; 14:9). Without protracting the discussion at this point to provide a precise definition, we may content ourselves to say that, broadly speaking, “the gospel” for Mark is the good news that God has, in the person of Jesus, launched a project for the inauguration of the promised new age34 and the salvation of human beings (for our purposes, further definition of the comprehensive term “salvation” is not needed). Though Mark (as I have repeatedly noted) does not pause to point out the necessary implication, it is clearly incumbent upon human beings to respond by believing in, and getting on board with, the divine initiative. 4. An equivalent to the word “gospel” in this sense, again in both the Gospel of Mark and in a host of other early Christian writings, is the word “word”:35 if the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel can summarily be said to have proclaimed the “gospel,” he can also be said simply to speak “the word” (Mark 2:2; 4:33; cf. 4:14–20). That no further definition is required itself signals the technical sense in which this most common of words is used, a technical sense found in abundance elsewhere as well (e. g., Acts 4:4; 8:4, 14; 11:1; 1 Thess 1:6; Jas 1:21; 1 Pet 1:23–25). 5. The early Christians understood neither “the word” nor “the gospel” as inert, material that served merely to convey information for the consideration of listeners. When the word, or the gospel, is spoken, a force is thought to be released; more specifically, God is thought to be at work, “calling” hearers (as noted above) into his kingdom. Isaiah 55 spoke famously of the “word” that “goes out of [God’s] mouth” and does not “return” to him “empty,” but accomplishes the purpose for which it was dispatched (Isa 55:11). A host of references in early Christian literature show that the proclamation of the word, or the gospel, was understood along similar lines.36 I quote only a few of the more obvious texts: Our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. (1 Thess 1:5) When you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers. (1 Thess 2:13; cf. Rom 10:17)

34 

Cf. Collins, Beginning, 36–37. Cf. Stanton, Jesus and Gospel, 60–61. 36  Cf. Luz, Studies, 278. 35 



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The message [literally, “the word”] about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor 1:18; cf. Rom 1:16) Just as it [the word of the truth, the gospel] is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it. (Col 1:5–6) Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. (Jas 1:21) You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. For “all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” That word [namely, the “word” that Isaiah 40 is talking about] is the good news [i. e., the gospel] that was announced to you. (1 Pet 1:23–25).

Mark undoubtedly understood “the word” and the “gospel” spoken by Jesus as similarly dynamic; such is indeed suggested by the explanation given to the parable of the sower, in which, depending on the nature of its hearers, “the word” does or does not bear “fruit” in their lives (4:14–20). But, given that Mark understood what he wrote to be “the gospel,” and given his own equation of “the word” and “the gospel,” must Mark not also have understood his written text as “the [living and active] word of the Lord”? 6. There is no reason to think that Mark thought he was writing scripture as such, as though he anticipated his Gospel being added to an expanded version of holy writ. On the other hand, he cannot have believed that the word of God spoken through his text was in any way inferior to the word of God spoken in the accepted scriptures of his day.37 On the contrary: the word announcing the fulfillment of the ages and God’s decisive intervention for the salvation of human beings was the decisive divine word for his day. 7. In short, Mark intended his readers to hear a foundational story from the past, one that at times offered accounts of behavior to be imitated, and one in which, more frequently, they could see something of their own experience. He also wrote his Gospel, as early Christians proclaimed the gospel, in the confidence that God would address his hearers through his words, so that, in receptive hearts, those words would bear fruit. And what of Matthew? Matthew has no equivalent to Mark 1:1; his rather more “bookish” beginning perhaps suggests that something more than a recorded equivalent of the church’s proclamation is intended. And it has already been noted that his heightened emphasis on the teaching of Jesus and, in the narrative portions of the Gospel, on what is typical and es37  Cf. Luz, Studies, 338. Note Mark 7:13, where “the word of God” in Scripture is contrasted with traditions handed down among the Pharisees.

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sential rather than what is circumstantial suggest that, though he too is telling the foundational story of the church, his awareness of the contemporary church’s needs may lie nearer to the surface than did Mark’s. To my mind, a clear indication of at least a large part of what Matthew thought he was doing, and of what he wanted hearers to hear in his Gospel, is found in Matthew 28:18–20. The risen Jesus addresses his worshiping but perplexed disciples in these terms: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Wherever disciples are made, they are to be taught all the commands that Jesus gave to his first disciples. This particular task, within the story-line of the Gospel, should not prove too difficult: the disciples being commissioned are merely to pass on what they themselves have heard. Even they, however, could no doubt use a ready handbook to remind them of what precisely it was that Jesus had commanded them. And even more in need of such a tool would be the followers of these, Jesus’ first disciples, and their followers in turn. Matthew has come to their rescue. As elsewhere, here, too, he keeps within the constraints of a narrative of the past, so that when Jesus tells his disciples to teach their converts all that he has commanded them, Matthew does not add within parentheses, “Cf. the five extended discourses and numerous other logia recorded earlier in this book”; but he might as well have. Ulrich Luz puts it thus: Proto-canonical tendencies are apparent at the end of Matthew’s Gospel. With the mission command διδάσκοντες αὐτους τηρεῖν πάντα ὅσα ἐνετειλάμην ὑμῖν (“teach them to observe all that I have commanded to you,” Matt. 28:20a), Matthew can actually be said to “canonize” his own book. It contains – especially in the discourses of Jesus spoken into the present – everything the messengers of Jesus need for their missionary proclamation.38

Matthew has provided an authoritative record of the teachings of Jesus, to be used as such in Christian communities. Whether or not it occurred to him that he was writing scripture, he certainly intended his writing to serve the role of Scripture in Christian communities, those already founded and those yet to be established among “all nations.” The teachings of Jesus form the backbone of the Gospel of Matthew. Yet even these ever-relevant instructional texts here find their place within the broader story of the Gospel.39 The Gospel of Matthew is, in the first place, a telling of the story of the teacher that includes his teachings; and in the end, 38 Luz, 39 

Studies, 337. Cf. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 5, 14.



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the uniqueness of the Teacher takes priority over the substance of his teaching. As much as we need to know what he taught, we need to understand, at a still more basic level, why he is and must be the only Teacher.40 Matthew takes upon himself the task for his readers that, within his narrative, the transfiguration plays for the disciples: evoking or enhancing their faith in the Beloved Son as the necessary first stage to commending his commands to their obedience (Matt 17:5). Beyond, then, the practical purpose of conveying the Lord’s instructions, Matthew, like Mark, has written an authoritative account of the church’s foundational story intended to be an instrument for evoking faith in, obedience to, and worship of the Teacher among all who hear his words. One final thought. The canonization of Matthew’s Gospel, like that of Mark, lay years in the future, the conclusion of an extended process. Perhaps from the very beginning, perhaps in line with the evangelists’ own intentions, these Gospels were solemnly read in Christian assemblies.41 If so, the setting would only underline the message implicit in the texts themselves, that “this is the word of the Lord.” Nonetheless, it would take time before the wider church would acknowledge these writings and not others as authoritative; still longer before their authority was attributed to the inspiration of their authors, and their very wording became the subject of reverent exegesis. But each new stage in the process, it seems to me, marked a change in degree, not an alteration in kind. In the minds of our authors themselves, and surely in the understanding of their first hearers, these were authoritative accounts of the grand initiative, conveying a divine imperative. If the whole story of the canonization of these texts is to be told, we must begin with the nature of the writings themselves and the intentions of their authors.42 Bibliography Aune, David E. The New Testament in Its Literary Environment. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987. Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. Bornkamm, Günther. “The Stilling of the Storm in Matthew.” In Günther Born­ kamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held, Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew. London: SCM, 1963, 52–57. Bultmann, Rudolf. The History of the Synoptic Tradition. Revised edition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968. 40 Byrskog,

Teacher; cf. Gerhardsson, Origins, 47–49. Cf. Hartman, “Lectio sollemnis.” 42  Cf. also Smith, “Scripture”; and, for the Gospel of John, Moloney, “Scripture.” 41 

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Byrskog, Samuel. Jesus the Only Teacher. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1994. Collins, Adela Yarbro. The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992. Cranfield, C. E. B. The Gospel According to Saint Mark. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Davies, W. D., and Dale C. Allison, Jr. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Vols. 1–3. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988–1997. Gerhardsson, Birger. Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity. Lund: Gleerup, 1961. – The Origins of the Gospel Traditions. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. – “Der Weg der Evangelientradition.” In Das Evangelium und die Evangelien, edited by Peter Stuhlmacher. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1983, 79–102. Hartman, Lars. “Das Markusevangelium, ‘für die lectio sollemnis im Gottesdienst abgefasst’?” In Geschichte – Tradition – Reflexion: Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag. Band III: Frühes Christentum, edited by Hermann Lichtenberger. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1996, 147–171. Hengel, Martin. The Charismatic Leader and His Followers. New York: Crossroad, 1981. – The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000. Hooker, Morna D. The Gospel According to Saint Mark. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991. Lemcio, Eugene. The Past of Jesus in the Gospels. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Lindeskog, Gösta. “Logia-Studien.” Studia Theologica 4 (1950): 129–189. Luz, Ulrich. Matthew 1–7: A Commentary. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007. – Matthew 8–20: A Commentary. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001. – Matthew 21–28: A Commentary. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. – Studies in Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. Manson, William. Jesus the Messiah. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1943. Marcus, Joel. Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York: Doubleday, 2000. Marxsen, Willi. Mark the Evangelist. Nashville: Abingdon, 1969. Moloney, Francis J. “The Gospel of John as Scripture.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 67 (2005): 454–468. Moule, Charles Francis Digby. “The Function of the Synoptic Gospels.” In Glaube und Eschatologie: Festschrift für Werner Georg Kümmel zum 80. Geburtstag, edited by Erich Grässer and Otto Mark. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1985, 199–208. Roloff, Jürgen. Das Kerygma und der irdische Jesus: Historische Motive in den JesusErzählungen der Evangelien. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970. Smith, D. Moody. “When Did the Gospels Become Scripture?” Journal of Biblical Literature 119 (2000): 3–20. Stanton, Graham N. Jesus and Gospel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. – Jesus of Nazareth in New Testament Preaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974.

Chapter 10

Pragmatism and the Gospel Tradition It came as a surprise to many readers of Bultmann’s History of the Synoptic Tradition that an eminent scholar of Christian beginnings, after immersing himself in documents ostensibly telling the story of Jesus, not that of the post-Easter community, should emerge claiming to know so little about Jesus, so much about the early church.1 Yet Bultmann proved to be breaking a path that Gospel research would largely follow. The notion that the Synoptic Gospels reveal much more about early Christian communities than they do about Jesus came to be identified with the form criticism of the Gospels, of which Bultmann’s monograph was, by far, the most influential work. The methodology would dominate the agenda of Gospel studies for half a century or so. The identification of particular notions of Rudolf Bultmann with formcritical methodology may in this case be somewhat misleading. Form critics, as form critics, assumed that certain kinds of popular, non-literary texts – among which the units of the synoptic tradition were to be included – are repeated and thus preserved in specific, typical settings that cause the materials to be molded in specific, typical ways. The host of issues raised by this assumption and by its application to the Jesus tradition need not detain us here. Many have argued that form-critical assumptions do not themselves prescribe a pervasive skepticism about the authenticity of the Gospels’ sayings or the historicity of their narratives, and that Bultmann’s stance in these matters had other roots. That argument will not be pursued here. Here the observation is pertinent that form-critical methodology does not itself dictate the kind of mirror reading of community needs from community texts that Bultmann practiced with a vengeance and that enabled him to portray, with stunning confidence and detail, the life of the postEaster community from its traditions about the pre-Easter Jesus. In Mark 2:1–12, Jesus is said to have healed a man as a demonstration of his right to pronounce forgiveness of sins. Bultmann, who attributes the presence of such pericopes in the community’s traditions to their usefulness in meeting community needs, reads the passage rather woodenly as indicating that the Palestinian church invoked healings of its own to jus1  Cf. Taylor, Formation, 107. Unless indicated otherwise, Biblical quotations in what follows are taken from the Revised Standard Version.

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tify its own practice of pronouncing forgiveness.2 He can, of course, cite other passages that speak of the church’s right to pronounce forgiveness of sins (Matt 16:18; 18:18). That the community’s healings were invoked to defend that practice has, however, no textual warrant apart from the assumption that the community only preserved traditions that directly served its own pragmatic needs. According to Mark 2:23–28, Jesus defended his disciples for picking grain on the Sabbath, an incident that on the surface seems unlikely to have had repeated parallels in the life of the postEaster community. Yet Bultmann sees in the passage the community’s justification of its own Sabbath “customs.”3 Such examples could, of course, be multiplied. Now, in the notion that typical settings of transmission mold texts in typical ways, there is, one would have thought, no inherent reason why either the settings or the transmitted texts must serve ends that are as exclusively and narrowly pragmatic as Bultmann’s work presupposes. Gunkel, whose form-critical work on Genesis preceded that of Bultmann on the Gospels by a couple decades, can hardly have envisaged such a restriction when he suggested that what he called the “legends of Genesis” were passed on “in the leisure of a winter evening”: “the family,” he imagined, “sits about the hearth; the grown people, but more especially the children, listen intently to the beautiful old stories of the dawn of the world, which they have heard so often yet never tire of hearing repeated.”4 (Ah, the bliss of family life before the television was invented!) If needs were being addressed in such a setting, they are scarcely of the pragmatic sort presupposed by Bultmann. Still, perhaps because of Bultmann’s work, the form criticism of the Gospels has come to be seen as resting on a further axiom: only material useful to the fledgling community was kept in the gospel tradition. Of the many statements to that effect in the literature, let me quote a single example, from an otherwise fairly conservative scholar, Vincent Taylor: The formation of Jesus-tradition was largely a communal process. Stories had survival-value, not so much because they had interest for the individual, but because they ministered to the needs of Christians who met together in religious fellowship. There must have been many stories of invaluable interest to the modern man which had no chance of survival, because they knocked in vain at the doors of communal faith. They were not deliberately ignored; they were not appreciated because they did not minister to universal needs. The tradition welcomed was that which ministered to faith and justified existing practices; which answered questions and met the objections of hostile critics; which illuminated relationships between individuals in the community and between the community and the outside world. What was 2 Bultmann,

History, 15–16. History, 16. 4 Gunkel, Legends, 41. 3 Bultmann,



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wanted was a standard of life, and this was found in the words and deeds of Jesus; the stories cherished were those which set the standard. 5

Material survived if it met communal needs. And from this axiom it has seemed (and still seems) to many to follow that the community’s needs may be directly deduced from the traditions it preserves. In some cases, we are told, community need led to the recollection and preservation of sayings and deeds of Jesus that would otherwise have been forgotten. In other cases, community need is believed to have generated tradition not based in Jesus’ career. The underlying conviction of the tradition’s pragmatic character has been the same in either case. The conviction has not gone unchallenged. Among the criticisms raised that cannot be developed here, the following may at least be noted. 1. T. W. Manson expressed the spontaneous reaction of many when he wondered whether simple interest in, and devotion to, Jesus was not a factor in the preservation of gospel tradition. I quote from his influential work The Sayings of Jesus, where, after noting that the needs of pastoral work constituted the “principal factor” at work in the preservation of the tradition, Manson notes that an additional factor was personal interest in Jesus Himself. It is not a desire to write His biography – in the strict sense of the word there is no biography of Jesus – but rather a very natural instinct to treasure up characteristic words, words that revealed Him, sayings which, in their pointed brevity, told more about Him than many pages of description could tell. The interest of those who preserved and compiled these sayings is comparable to that which preserved the oracles of the Hebrew prophets long after the historical situations to which they were relevant were past. It is part of the devotion of the disciple to his Master, and it is not difficult to believe that there were many among those who followed Jesus and heard His teaching, who pondered His sayings in their hearts, not with an eye to the future needs of the Church, but simply because they had known the author of them and loved Him.6

Not unrelated in essence, though this time massively argued, is the thesis of Samuel Byrskog that the importance placed upon Jesus as the exclusive teaching authority (the “only teacher”) in Matthew’s Gospel indicates that its community transmitted Jesus tradition not for pragmatic reasons, but because, like other groups that grew up around prophets and teachers, it “cherished Jesus’ teaching, life, and person for their own sakes.”7

5 Taylor, Formation, 145–146; cf. Sanders and Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels, 124, 135. 6  T. W. Manson, Sayings, 9–10; also his Studies, 6. 7 Byrskog, Teacher, 400. Cf. also Riesner, Lehrer, 37–40.

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2. Jürgen Roloff,8 Graham Stanton,9 Nils Alstrup Dahl,10 and Eugene Lemcio11 are among those who have argued in detail that the gospel tradition maintained a distinction between the “then” of Jesus’ earthly career and the “now” of the post-Easter community; and they insist on the importance of memories of Jesus in the early church.12 3. Other scholars have pointed to the preservation of traditions that, far from meeting community needs, caused embarrassment, which the community was anxious to neutralize.13 For some scholars, indeed, such indications of embarrassment constitute the most solid argument that can be cited for the historicity of particular traditions.14 That they find material that meets the criterion must at least raise questions about the claim that only what was useful was preserved. 4. A number of scholars responded to the claim of some form critics that community needs freely generated Jesus’ traditions by drawing up lists of matters known to be important in the early church but absent from the gospel tradition: the terms of Gentile admission to the community in general and the issue of circumcision in particular, problems created by mixed assemblies of Jewish and Gentile believers, questions related to meat sacrificed to idols, problems associated with spiritual gifts, and so on.15 Conversely, the presence in the tradition of material lacking immediate practical relevance in the communities that preserved them again tells against the assumption that only the useful was kept: the discussion of Jewish purity laws in Mark’s Gospel is only one of the more obvious examples. 5. Again, a number of scholars have insisted that some texts, far from directly reflecting existing conditions, may be intended to challenge or correct them.16 Texts that attack the wealthy and bless the poor may, after all, be designed to disturb the complacent rich as well as comfort the downtrodden poor; in principle, then, the community to which they are addressed could be made up of either. Though this observation does not challenge the notion that the tradition addressed perceived needs, it does point to a peril facing

8 Roloff,

Kerygma. Jesus of Nazareth. 10 Dahl, Memory. 11 Lemcio, Past of Jesus. 12  Cf. also Gerhardsson, Origins, 43–46. 13  Cf. Stein, Synoptic Problem, 177–178. 14  Cf. Sanders and Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels, 304–315. 15  Cf. Easton, Gospel, 88–109; Caird, “Study,” 140; Sanders and Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels, 192, 195. 16  E. g., Malherbe, Aspects, 13; Tuckett, Q, 82. 9 Stanton,



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those who would draw conclusions about social conditions from hortatory texts in particular.17 6. Perhaps most significant for our purposes is the insistence of some scholars on a distinction between the preservation and the use of a tradition.18 Paul’s use in 1 Corinthians of the words of the Lord on divorce, and of the (already transmitted) traditions on the Lord’s supper and the witnesses of the resurrection (7:10; 11:23–25; 15:3–7) illustrates the point. Indeed, the persuasive power of a tradition cited in an argument such as Paul’s would seem to depend on its currency independent of the context in which it is being applied. Such criticisms and the eventual eclipse of form criticism notwithstanding, the notion that I am here calling the pragmatism of the gospel tradition continues to thrive in gospel research: the notion, that is, that the early Christian communities only passed on tradition that they found useful for their purposes and that, as a result, the nature of those communities is reflected more or less directly in the traditions they preserved. Studies proliferate on the Jesus movement, early Palestinian Christianity, the Q community (or communities), the Markan community, the Matthean community: and in many of these studies, the assumption of the pragmatism of the tradition is – implicitly or explicitly, crudely or with much sophistication – pivotal to the description. The work of Gerd Theissen may be cited, partly because of its importance to the field, partly because of the explicitness with which he affirms the notion under review. In Theissen’s view, the primary tradents of the sayings tradition of the Synoptic Gospels were wandering charismatics. Though Theissen finds some evidence for their existence and portrayal in other Christian writings and in the analogy of Cynic philosophers, his argument is largely based on the synoptic materials themselves.19 The relevance of these materials for a description of post-Easter itinerants does not, according to Theissen, require that the materials were generated among them. On the contrary, his sociological method, he argues, is completely neutral on questions of authenticity and historicity. All it presupposes is a correspondence between the Jesus tradition and the life of the community that transmitted it. Tradition that originated among the itinerants, he suggests, would naturally reflect their way of life. But the same is true of any authentic Jesus’ traditions that the itinerants merely preserved. After all, he argues, they would not have preserved directives of Jesus that they were not themselves prepared 17 

On the perils of “mirror-reading” polemical texts, see Barclay, “Mirror-Reading.” Cf. Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, 335. Also Riesner, Lehrer, 55–60, with references to other authors. 19  Theissen, “Wandering Radicals.” 18 

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to implement.20 Traditions that a group cannot accept will be jettisoned.21 Existing tradition, then, can be drawn upon for a description of the lifestyle of its tradents.22 Theissen’s methodological statements are alert to a possibility to which some form critics tended to be blind: tradition can shape life as well as be shaped by it.23 If tradition is not created or repeated to address existing needs, it is itself creative of needs that must be addressed in ways prescribed by the tradition if the tradition is to be preserved. In this case too, though, tradition comes to mirror the life of its transmitters. Both Bultmann and Theissen express a qualification that I find revealing. The gospel traditions have, after all, now been cherished and preserved for nearly two millennia. Perhaps, in the broadest of terms, something can be learned about the communities that have preserved the traditions from the content of what they preserved; but even the most pragmatic of minds must concede that, at some point, the mere preservation of tradition by a community cannot support the kind of detailed depiction of its way of life that Bultmann and Theissen reconstruct for the early period. Some explanation seems called for. Bultmann is convinced that what he labels the apophthegmatic materials in the synoptic tradition directly reflect the life of the Palestinian community. He must perforce grant, however, that this is no longer the case already in the Hellenistic communities that took over and preserved them. Why can transmitted material illuminate the life of the transmitters in the first case but not the second? Bultmann explains: “the sheer weight of the extant tradition availed for its propagation even though there was no longer any concrete need for many of its constituent sections.”24 Perhaps; but how, then, can we know at what point the “weight” of a tradition suffices to assure its “propagation”? Though Theissen is convinced that only the existence of wandering charismatics in the earliest Palestinian community can explain the presence of much material in the synoptic tradition, similar conclusions cannot, of course, be drawn about later communities that preserved the same traditions. In Theissen’s view, “a written tradition can survive for a time even when it has no bearing on the behavior of men and women. … But oral tradition is at the mercy of the interests and concerns of the people who pass it on and to whom it is addressed.”25 No doubt the writing down of 20 

Theissen, “Einordnung,” 13–14; Sociology, 3–4. Theissen, “Wandering Radicals,” 56. 22  Theissen, “Einordnung,” 13. 23  Theissen, “Einordnung,” 14. 24 Bultmann, History, 370. 25  Theissen, “Wandering Radicals,” 35; see also 57. 21 



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a tradition often26 has an effect on its stability. But it is not clear why oral, but not written, traditions must necessarily be pragmatic in character. Both Bultmann and Theissen have pressed the dubious notion of the gospel tradition’s pragmatism to its limits, then abandoned it when its untenability becomes obvious. Perhaps we are tempted by the pragmatic preoccupation of much modern thought and the modern distrust of authority to assume that pragmatic ends alone are operative in the early stages of a tradition. Still, historical awareness and imagination ought to equip us to resist the temptation. When Muhammad recited for his followers the revelations of the angel Gabriel, devotees did not sift the wheat to be preserved from the chaff to be discarded by any criterion of usefulness. Presumably, they felt it incumbent upon themselves to preserve anything revealed from on high. Nor, in such a case, did occasions in which the traditions could be applied pragmatically provide the first or primary inspiration for their remembrance. Of course, there are differences between the situations and traditions of the early Muslims and those of the early Christians. It is not, however, clear that the differences affect the point at issue here. Every prophet, every sage, every teacher, every messianic aspirant – indeed, every politician will speak at times casually and in passing, at other times carefully and with authority to match their vocation or pretensions; at times they speak “off the cuff,” at other times “for the record.” And most of the time, those who are attracted to and attend a prophet, sage, teacher, messianic aspirant, or even politician will be sensitive to the difference. “Off the cuff” remarks may be exploited by the malicious or the media (the categories are not mutually exclusive); among disciples, however, they may well be remembered only by those of remarkable memory or devotion, or, to be sure, because a situation of practical urgency calls them to mind. But statements made “for the record” are treated differently: cameras, microphones, notebooks come out, ears prick up, minds and memories are engaged. Such statements are distinguished from incidental remarks by the formality with which they are introduced, the care with which they are formulated and delivered, the concern exhibited that listeners receive them correctly. When the speaker is the object of group allegiance or devotion; when the speaking is marked by tokens of a significant utterance; and, particularly, when what is spoken is formulated carefully, crisply, and memorably: under such conditions, pragmatic usefulness is scarcely essential to the recollection and the spreading of the dictum among the faithful.

26  But not always; cf. Gerhardsson, Gospel Tradition, 34–39; Aune, “Oral Tradition,” 240; Byrskog, Teacher, 323–324.

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In this context, I am not concerned to debate issues of authenticity with regard either to particular sayings in the gospel tradition or the tradition as a whole. We need not pause to consider in what specific capacity, or with the authority of what vocation, the original speaker of any of the sayings may have spoken. The point to be made is this: whoever first said things like “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand” (Mark 3:24–25); or “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile” (Mark 7:15 [NRSV]); or “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her” (Mark 10:11) – whoever first said these things was deliberately speaking, and was perceived to be speaking, “for the record.” In light of both the calculated formulation and the authoritative tenor of the sayings, we may surely assume that they were introduced with indications of solemnity, uttered with indications of deliberateness, and followed with indications of concern for their responsible reception. That these and other sayings were received and passed on in the same spirit – as material of intrinsic significance to be remembered and transmitted, not as items of merely utilitarian importance that happened to be recalled when occasions of need arose – is suggested by reflection on three observations, none of which is controversial. First, the transmitters of the tradition preserved sayings apart from the contexts in which they were spoken and upon which, in some cases, their meaning is dependent. Second, they at times combined sayings from quite different contexts and making quite different points in artificial ways to ensure their preservation. Third, they at times continued to preserve sayings whose point they no longer understood, still less could have exploited for pragmatic ends. 1. First, then, the preservation of sayings apart from their context. No particular sophistication is required for readers of the Synoptic Gospels to be aware that many passages represent collections of disparate sayings rather than continuous discourses. In such cases, individual sayings originally spoken in particular contexts have been detached from their context, which was then forgotten, whereas the sayings themselves were preserved. It seems not overbold to suggest that the contexts were accorded no intrinsic value, whereas the sayings themselves were.27 The obtuseness of the tradents involved in the operation can be exaggerated. After all, the point of some sayings is less dependent on context than that of others. Readers of wisdom literature are accustomed to the juxtaposition of unrelated proverbs whose clarity is by no means compromised by 27 

Cf. Lindeskog, “Logia-Studien,” 133.



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editorial passivity. And much of the gospel sayings material is similar. We do not need to know the specific occasion when the words “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt 6:24) first were spoken, or “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt 12:34), or “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant” (Matt 20:26). Had much of the sayings tradition not been of this nature, the tradents presumably would not have proceeded in the way they did. Nonetheless, it is clear that the procedure, once adopted, was followed in cases where context is crucial to the sense, and that this was not noted by tradents proceeding rather mechanically on the assumption of the intrinsic value of the words they preserved. It was left to the collectors of traditions and those who composed narrative accounts of Jesus to resupply such sayings with contexts of which the process of transmission had deprived them. The phenomenon is well known; we may be brief in its illustration. Someone at some point said something like “A disciple is not above his teacher” and/or “A servant is not above his master.” Something about the “someone” or the “some point” was sufficient to secure the saying admission to the Jesus tradition. By itself, however, the saying is banal, almost tautologous; we must assume that it was first spoken in a particular context in which its application proved significant. But though clearly both the point and the use of the saying are dependent on such a context, the saying but not the context of its use was ascribed intrinsic value and preserved. It was left to collectors of sayings and composers of continuous texts to try to supply it with a significant context: disciples and servants should expect no better treatment than that accorded their betters (so Matt 10:24–25; John 15:20); or they should be prepared to wash one another’s feet as their teacher and master once did (so John 13:13–16). The context in Luke provides little illumination, but the saying has been supplemented with what is presumably an explanatory line (roughly paralleled in Matt 10:25): its point is perhaps that pupils should be content to be like their teachers (Luke 6:40). The diversity of interpretations placed on the saying reflect the editorial quandary created by tradents for whom preservation but not use was the immediate goal of their endeavors. In Mark 4:21, immediately after the parable of the sower and its explanation, we read: “He said to them, ‘Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not on a stand?’” The answer is so obvious that the observation cannot have been intended to make sense on its own. It can only have been introduced to illustrate a point: something there is whose potential or present concealment is deemed temporary or (perhaps) inappropriate; the illustration serves to underline that its concealment either cannot be intended, or must not be allowed, to continue; that which is concealed will one day be revealed, or ought to be so now. To this saying Mark

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attaches another: “For there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret, except to come to light” (4:22). The combination of the two verses perhaps favors the view that the concealment in question is temporary rather than inappropriate, though we are still left to guess the subject of the concealment. On that matter, the commentary literature shows a wide variety of proposals but no consensus. For our purposes, it will suffice to note Cranfield’s interpretation; it is as likely as any and more likely than some: “For a while the kingdom of God is a mystery, concealed under apparent weakness, and this hiddenness (or indirectness of revelation) must not be laid aside before the time. But the present costly hiddenness is for the express purpose of the kingdom’s future glorious manifestation.”28 With minor variations in wording, the same sayings appear in Luke 8:16–17, also immediately after the parable of the sower, and with the same ambiguity that we found in Mark. A doublet of the saying is found in Luke 11:33, this time after the claim that the blindness and obstinacy of “this generation” will be condemned on the day of judgment by the queen of the south and the people of Nineveh, inasmuch as the present generation has failed to respond to a greater presence than any known to its predecessors (11:29–32). Then we read, “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a bushel, but on the stand, that those who enter may see the light.” On its own, this last version is no less ambiguous than the other instances we have seen; but if we are to understand it in its present context, then perhaps its point, as Howard Marshall suggests, is quite the opposite of its apparent force in Mark 4 and Luke 8. Marshall takes the verse to mean “that God has given in Jesus a light which is not hidden … but which is sufficiently clear to give light to all.”29 A parallel to Luke 11:33 is found in Matthew 5:15; there the point, however, is that Jesus’ disciples are to let their light shine before others “in Christian witness.”30 I should add that our saying also occurs in Gospel of Thomas, logion 33, where its point seems akin to that in Matthew’s Gospel. Now it is of course possible that Jesus used the same (or similar) words on different occasions to make quite different points. That does not appear to be what has happened here, however, for the context in which this saying occurs in our Gospels offers little if any illumination for its interpretation. Surely what has happened is rather that words have been deemed worthy of preservation apart from the context that originally gave them meaning. And the evangelists (or their predecessors) have inserted the sayings at what seemed to them appropriate places. 28 Cranfield,

Mark, 165. Luke, 487. 30 Marshall, Luke, 487. 29 Marshall,



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We could go on. The saying that “there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest” occurs in a variety of contexts; the same is true of the claim that more will be given to the one who already has, or that both the blind who lead and those who follow will end up in a hole.31 Each of these sayings requires a context for its point to be apparent; each was apparently preserved apart from such a context. The evangelists (and in some cases their predecessors) have striven in different ways to wrest significance from such sayings. Their efforts need not detain us further here; our concern is rather with the source of their troubles. The content of a tradition preserved for its perceived intrinsic value without regard to its intelligibility, to say nothing of its potential use, can hardly reflect the life situation of the transmitting community. Nor, I would suggest, may we conclude from the evangelists’ (and their predecessors’) efforts to make sense of such intractable sayings much more than their devotion to the tradition. 2. No group can orally transmit quantities of independent sayings in complete isolation from each other. Thematic combinations suggest themselves naturally, whether one attributes the material intrinsic or merely utilitarian value. Other kinds of combination, however, would seem to reflect the former mindset. In particular, the juxtaposition of sayings unrelated by substance or application on the purely mechanical principle of a common catchword is singularly ill-suited, and seems unlikely to have been designed, to meet particular pragmatic needs of the community. The object in the mind of those responsible for such artificial collections would appear to be the organization and convenient preservation of quantities of disparate materials deemed of intrinsic value.32 The phenomenon is a familiar one;33 one example must suffice, that in Mark 9. It is quite possible that the exchange between John and Jesus in Mark 9:38–41 about the exorcist who did not follow Jesus is connected to the preceding pericope about the greatest disciple because the phrase “in my name” occurs in both (9:37, 39). In any case, the reference in 9:42 to leading “one of these little ones” into sin seems to follow from the reference in 9:37 to welcoming a child in Jesus’ name. But to the saying about leading little ones into sin in 9:42 is added a series of other sayings about causes of sin of quite a different sort: here it is one’s own hand, foot, or eye that, as an occasion for temptation, may bring one to fall (9:43–47). The connection with what precedes is purely verbal. This particular series, ending with the observation that “it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one 31  Matt 10:26 + Mark 4:22 + Luke 8:17 + 12:2; Matt 13:12 + 25:29 + Mark 4:25 + Luke 8:18 + 19:26; Matt 15:14 + Luke 6:39. 32  Cf. Lindeskog, “Logia-Studien,” 133–134. 33  See, e. g., Bultmann, History, 325–326, citing Mark 4:21 ff.; 9:33 ff.; Luke 11:34–36.

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eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell,” is then connected with a saying about hell drawn from Isaiah 66:24, “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.” The fire of that saying is then connected to the fire of the cryptic saying in 9:49, “Every one will be salted with fire”; the salt of the latter saying is then connected with the floating logion, “Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its saltness, how will you season it?” Apparently there was still more salt in the tradition, however; next comes “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another” (9:50). Bultmann himself, of course, was well aware of the phenomenon. He refers to the “quite primitive process of adding one small unit to another” to form larger collections on the basis of “similarity of content or some outward likeness (the use of some catchword)” or even “pure chance.”34 His words should be borne in mind by commentators, for whom an occupational hazard appears to be the temptation to discover subtle progressions of thought wherever sayings are juxtaposed. More germane to our purposes, however, is what this stage of the sayings’ transmission betrays about the activities and mindset of the transmitters. Far from creating or calling up material merely to serve immediate pragmatic ends, they (at least at times) deliberately (if rather mechanically) connected quite disparate materials in ways designed to serve no other purpose than that of easy memorization; materials collected for that purpose alone have clearly been ascribed intrinsic worth. 3. If commentators are loathe to acknowledge the mechanical rather than profoundly reflective juxtaposition of disparate sayings, they may well be disinclined to concede my final point as well. I am at least not the first to suspect that already those who transmitted some sayings in the Gospels must have been as clueless as we are in deciphering them. William Manson once suggested35 that the early Christians themselves probably did not understand Matthew 11:12: “the kingdom of heaven βιάζεται [whatever that means], and βιασταὶ [whoever they are] ἁρπάζουσιν αὐτήν [your guess is as good as mine].” I suspect that Manson was right. It seems as well that a common, though all but unintelligible, text underlies both Matthew 23:25–26 and Luke 11:39–41. Matthew reads: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity. You blind Pharisee! first cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean.” Luke reads: “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of extortion and wickedness. [Note that, in Luke, it is the Pharisees that are full of bad 34 Bultmann, 35 

History, 322. William Manson, Jesus the Messiah, 28.



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things, whereas in Matthew it is the vessels themselves.] You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give for alms those things which are within; and behold, everything is clean for you.” In spite of significant differences, the tradition is clearly common: both pronounce woes on Pharisees, both contrast Pharisaic concern for cleaning the outside of vessels with an interior wickedness, both provide prescriptions for making everything clean. But problems in the recollection or transmission or perhaps translation of the original have led to difficulties that Matthew and Luke strive in different ways to resolve. The preservation of so difficult a tradition can only be attributed to its being ascribed intrinsic worth. To these examples, we may add one already cited above, a mixed metaphor if ever there was one: “Every one will be salted with fire” (Mark 9:49). Mark makes no attempt to explain it, linking it on both sides (as we have seen) with other sayings solely on a catchword principle. If, as 1 Peter tells us, prophets sometimes prophesied things they did not understand, I suspect that Mark transmitted sayings of which the same could be said. These are, of course, by no means the only obscure sayings in the tradition. Whether the roots of their obscurity lie in the intention of their original speaker, in their detachment from the context that gave them significance, or in corruption during their transmission need not concern us here.36 The point is simply that the early Christians could not have transmitted sayings so dauntingly obscure for pragmatic ends. As noted above, some sayings seem too inconvenient to have been preserved for their usefulness; others, we may now add, are too incomprehensible. Their preservation by those who no longer understood them can only be due to faith in their intrinsic value. What conclusions may we draw? I assume, though I have not argued the case here, that the sayings tradition has its origins in words of the historical Jesus that were formulated memorably and uttered with sufficient solemnity and deliberateness to ensure their preservation in the minds of disciples. While nothing has been said here that would compel such a conclusion, it would certainly explain the intrinsic value that early Christians placed upon the tradition for which we have seen evidence. That the tradition was then applied, interpreted, at times even corrupted is clear enough. All these factors, however, point to the significance and seriousness accorded the tradition in the early Christian communities. The tradition can hardly have been created or transmitted merely because pragmatic needs demanded authoritative texts for their resolution. Others have drawn attention to the semi-technical language used in various early 36  For the phenomenon of transmitting texts whose meaning has been forgotten or wording damaged, see Gerhardsson, Memory, 129–130.

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Christian texts for the transmission of gospel tradition and have argued on that basis that the early Christians engaged in the deliberate transmission of gospel tradition independently of their missionary, hortatory, and polemical activities.37 Such a conclusion seems to be supported by what we have seen of the process of transmission; also supported is the negative conclusion that the nature of the tradition’s transmission makes hazardous its use to determine the pragmatic needs and interests of the transmitting communities. Broadly speaking, we may claim that the Jesus tradition must have resonated with the thinking and circumstances of those who preserved it; but even that weaker claim can hardly be pressed in detail. At no period in Christian history, and in no congregation, will every saying deemed worthy of preservation have elicited from its hearers an immediate and lusty “Amen!” Finally, what can be said about the composers of continuous texts: the evangelists themselves and their predecessors? Can we not attribute to them sufficient intentionality to allow us to decipher specific concerns, needs, and agendas from the content of their compositions? No argument based on particulars can be pursued here. We must be content with general observations and the posing of a question. Whether or not we can successfully reconstruct the literary history of the Gospels and their sources, one thing is certain: at each new stage where we may suspect that innovation betrays agendas, older layers have been preserved: Mark preserved pre-Markan collections, Q2 kept Q1 (if the two can be distinguished), Matthew kept much of Mark and Q, and so on. Moreover, all labored to find significance in sayings transmitted without a context, all preserved artful but artificial assemblies of disparate sayings, all retained sayings that they must have found difficult. That the evangelists and their predecessors gave shape to the materials they inherited is selfevident: neither Q nor Mark, and certainly not Matthew or Luke represents a random collection of tradition. Still, when we have done our doggondest to categorize the component parts of our Gospels and their sources by their structure, themes, and ostensible purposes, there remain miscellaneous collections and odd sayings that resist classification. And so the question: Was the mindset of our composers of continuous texts, after all, so very different from that of the transmitters of traditions on whom they were dependent? Ought we not to acknowledge more readily their significant role, too, as custodians of tradition?

37 Cf. Gerhardsson, Origins, 27–41, 68, 77. The isolation of the gospel tradition’s transmission from other activities is argued on other grounds by Gerhardsson in “Weg,” 79–102.



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Bibliography Aune, David E. “Oral Tradition and the Aphorisms of Jesus.” In Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition, edited by Henry Wansbrough. Sheffield: JSOT, 1991, 211–265. Barclay, John M. G. “Mirror-Reading a Polemical Letter: Galatians as a Test Case.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 31 (1987): 73–93. Bultmann, Rudolph. The History of the Synoptic Tradition. Revised edition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968. Byrskog, Samuel. Jesus the Only Teacher. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1994. Caird, G. B. “The Study of the Gospels: II. Form Criticism.” Expository Times 87 (1975–1976): 137–141. Cranfield, C. E. B. The Gospel According to Saint Mark. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Dahl, Nils Alstrup. Jesus in the Memory of the Early Church. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1976. Easton, Burton Scott. The Gospel Before the Gospels. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928. Gerhardsson, Birger. The Gospel Tradition. Malmö: Gleerup, 1986. – Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity. Lund: Gleerup, 1961. – The Origins of the Gospel Traditions. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. – “Der Weg der Evangelientradition.” In Das Evangelium und die Evangelien, edited by Peter Stuhlmacher. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1983, 79–102. Gunkel, Hermann. The Legends of Genesis. Chicago: Open Court, 1901. Lemcio, Eugene. The Past of Jesus in the Gospels. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Lindeskog, Gösta. “Logia-Studien.” Studia Theologica 4 (1950): 129–189. Malherbe, Abraham J. Social Aspects of Early Christianity. Second edition. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983. Manson, T. W. The Sayings of Jesus. London: SCM, 1949. – Studies in the Gospels and Epistles. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962. Manson, William. Jesus the Messiah. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1943. Marshall, I. Howard. The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978. Riesner, Rainer. Jesus als Lehrer.Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1981. Roloff, Jürgen. Das Kerygma und der irdische Jesus: Historische Motive in den JesusErzählungen der Evangelien. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970. Sanders, E. P., and Margaret Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels. London: SCM, 1989. Stanton, Graham. Jesus of Nazareth in New Testament Preaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Stein, Robert. The Synoptic Problem: An Introduction. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987. Taylor, Vincent. The Formation of the Gospel Tradition. London: Macmillan, 1945. Theissen, Gerd. Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978. – “The Wandering Radicals: Light Shed by the Sociology of Literature on the Early Transmission of Jesus Sayings.” In Theissen, Social Reality and the Early Chris-

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tians: Theology, Ethics, and the World of the New Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992, 33–59. – “Zur forschungsgeschichtlichen Einordnung der soziologischen Fragestellung.” In Theissen, Studien zur Sociologie des Urchristentums. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1979, 3–34. Tuckett, Christopher M. Q and the History of Early Christianity: Studies in Q. Pea­ body: Hendrickson, 1996.

Chapter 11

The “New Perspective” at Twenty-Five “Even a child,” the Good Book tells us, “is known by his doings.” The “new perspective on Paul” is hardly still in its childhood: a quarter century has passed since it came to birth through the labors of E. P. Sanders, and nearly as long since it was christened by James D. G. Dunn. Yet to this day scholars cannot agree whether its appearance was a Good Thing. For the moment, as least, a survey of scholarly responses can only document diversity. Any survey must make some attempt at categorizing the material under review while acknowledging that classifications based on other criteria would result in the inclusion of different studies and in different alignments of those considered. In what follows I will, after a brief review of Sanders’s work, begin with those who agree with him both that the “Judaism” of Paul’s day was not “legalistic” and that Paul did not think it so, though they may disagree on whether, or in what way, Paul found fault with his ancestral faith. From these generally positive responses, I will move on to those who insist that Paul did criticize (at least some) contemporary Jews, or see the shortcomings of “Judaism,” in terms of a misplaced dependence on human endeavors. Such is the broad sweep of the survey. But though I have necessarily begun by placing scholars in (very rough) categories, my primary concern has been to convey their views fairly (if concisely)1 rather than to justify a particular taxonomy of the debate.

1  In my Perspectives, I have discussed a few of the more significant contributors to the debate in greater detail. Here brief treatment is given to a wider range of scholars, though no one who knows the field will mistake my efforts for an exhaustive survey. To impose some boundaries on the task, I have decided to treat only scholars who have published monographs on Paul that show significant dependence on, or that interact in significant ways with, Sanders’s understanding of Judaism and Paul. Worth noting is that the current preoccupation with the “new perspective on Paul” seems mostly confined to scholarship in English-speaking lands (cf. Niebuhr, “Rechtfertigungslehre,” 107; Stuhlmacher, Theologie, 1.241. (Finland, however, should be added to the list, owing to Heikki Räisänen’s early entry into the discussion and the domestic debate it has provoked.) Scholars elsewhere have not uniformly ignored the discussion; they tend to mention it, however, without invoking comparisons with Copernicus, and, while interacting with Sanders’s on points of detail, have not seen a need to rethink or defend everything they have learned about Paul in response to his work. Hence, a survey such as this is inevitably dominated by English-language scholarship.

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Paul as Sanders Sees Him 1. The conviction most central to the “new perspective on Paul” pertains in the first place to Judaism, not Paul. In Paul and Palestinian Judaism,2 E. P. Sanders set out “to destroy the view of Rabbinic Judaism which [at the time of writing, he could claim] is still prevalent in much, perhaps most, New Testament scholarship” (xii): a view that saw Judaism as a ­religion “of legalistic works-righteousness” (33) in which “one must earn salvation by compiling more good works (‘merits’), whether on his own or from the excess of someone else, than he has transgressions” (38). Such an understanding was thought to lead people either to a despairing uncertainty about their salvation or to a self-righteous boasting in its achievement (45). In Sanders’s view, only a massive misconstrual of the nature and intent of rabbinic sources could yield such a description of Jewish soteriology. In his own treatment of the literature of Palestinian Judaism and the letters of Paul, Sanders’s interest was in the “pattern of religion” they evidence rather than in individual motifs. (The “pattern” of a religion, for Sanders, is the way in which the religion admits and retains its members, or “how getting in and staying in are understood” [17].) It is among Sanders’s most important conclusions that a fundamental unity (a single “pattern of religion”) underlies nearly every witness we possess to the Judaism of the period “from around 200 b. c. e. to around 200 c. e.” (422–423). Sanders describes the unifying concept as “covenantal nomism”: the notion that a Jew’s standing before God is secured by God’s election of Israel as his covenant people (this, then, is how “getting in” was understood in Judaism), and that obedience to the law is the appropriate response to God’s initial act of grace (75). While a Jew’s intention to obey the law is thought necessary if the relationship with God is to be maintained (this, then, is how “staying in” was understood), it does not follow that salvation is “earned” or regarded as a reward for human achievements. To put the matter provocatively (and in this art, Sanders has demonstrated unique gifts), the relationship between grace and works is the same in Palestinian Judaism as in the letters of Paul: “salvation is by grace …; works are the condition of remaining ‘in’, but they do not earn salvation” (543). Why, then, did Paul reject Judaism? Sanders insists that, though Paul provided a variety of arguments for doing so, his real reason was rooted in his exclusivist soteriology: God had revealed salvation in Christ, so “no one may follow any other way whatsoever” (519); or, to quote Sanders’s 2  Page references to Sanders’s work in the body of the text are taken from this book. Sanders’s position is now also accessible in his introductory Paul.



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best known epigram, “This is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity” (552). A further factor, still rooted in one of Paul’s “primary convictions,” is allowed as well: “the salvation of the Gentiles is essential to Paul’s preaching, and with it falls the law; for, as Paul says simply, Gentiles cannot live by the law” (Gal. 2.14)” (496). Believing Christ to be God’s solution, (Sanders’s) Paul set out to define a plight. The very diversity that characterizes Paul’s portrayals of the human dilemma proves that his thinking began, not with a perceived plight needing a solution, but with a solution that required a plight (474). To be underlined here is perhaps only Sanders’s emphatic denial that Paul rejected the Jewish law because its observance led to self-righteousness and boasting.3 The only Jewish “boasting” to which Paul objects is that which exults over the divine privileges granted to Israel and fails to acknowledge that God, in Christ, has now opened the door of salvation to Gentiles.4 A major thrust of Sanders’s work, then, is that Paul’s rejection of Judaism was not triggered by, nor did it trigger, a substantial critique of his former faith.5 In the wake of his work, some scholars have gone further, concluding that Paul had no critique of Judaism. Others agree with Sanders that Paul’s critique was not a matter of substance. Still others make more of the “further factor” that Sanders did allow and see in Paul a critique of Judaism for its alleged ethnocentricity.

Paul Finds No Fault in Judaism 2. For Neil Elliott,6 Sanders has definitively refuted the illusion that Judaism was “devoted to fulfilling the ‘works of the Law’ as a means of attaining God’s favor”; but the illusion was not one under which Paul himself suffered (146; cf. 212). That Romans attacks Jewish “works-righteousness” is a misunderstanding fostered under the “Lutheran captivity” of the epistle (292). Paul’s aim in the opening chapters of the letter was not to refute Judaism, but to underline the (very Jewish) understanding that no human being is 3 Sanders,

Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 156. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 33. 5 This seems an obvious implication of Sanders’s claim that Judaism’s fault, in Paul’s eyes, lay in not being Christianity – and many have so construed it, as Sanders himself recognizes (“others have taken me to mean that Paul had no substantial critique of his native faith”). Without addressing the issue of the “substantiality” of the critique, Sanders notes that Paul did criticize Judaism on the two points alluded to above: “the lack of faith in Christ and the lack of equality for the Gentiles” (Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 154–155). 6 Elliott, Rhetoric of Romans. 4 Sanders,

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exempt from God’s righteous requirements, but that all are accountable to God (133–134, 198). Thus, when Paul highlights Jewish sins in 2:17–29, it is not because the sins themselves are the point of his indictment; rather, inasmuch as Jews might be thought to be exempt from God’s judgment, Paul cites their liability as paradigmatic of the truth (3:9) that judgment falls equally on all sinners (135, 141; cf. 145). Moreover, Paul declares that justification is “apart from law” only because, in principle, the demands of God’s law might be misconstrued as providing a basis for humans to claim the merit of fulfilling them: “the point of [Romans] 3:20 is that not even in the Law (where one might mistakenly expect to find it) is there any ground for boasting against God, therefore nowhere” (215; cf. 149). But, Elliott notes, though such a misunderstanding is “possible,” it is not one that Paul “explicitly ascribed to the Jews, or to anyone else for that matter” (155; cf. 149 n. 2). Indeed, since Paul is writing to the Roman Christians, he must intend that they take seriously his message and guard against presuming on God’s grace (126; cf. 185). The danger to which Paul responds in Romans lies in the Hellenistic-Christian doctrine of justification by faith, where “freedom from the Law” was not sufficiently tied to the requirement of obedience (294). The theology of Romans thus opposes, not Judaism, but the Hellenistic-Christian kerygma (295). 3. Lloyd Gaston’s studies of Paul7 assume that E. P. Sanders has accurately depicted Judaism and that “Paul knew at least as much about ‘covenantal nomism’ and Jewish ‘soteriology’ as does E. P. Sanders” (65). With Judaism itself, (Gaston’s) Paul has no quarrel (14). Certainly, he does not believe that Jews need Jesus to be saved: Jesus is not, for Paul, the Messiah, but “the new act of the righteousness of God,” bringing the salvation already enjoyed by Jews to the Gentiles as well (7). Jews and Gentiles alike are sinners, but, through its covenant, “Israel has always had cultic means of expiation.” Now “God has presented Christ Jesus as such a means for the Gentiles, apart from or alongside his covenant with Israel” (122). The only Jewish failure that Paul laments is the refusal to recognize this divine provision for the Gentiles (33, 142). Paul saw himself as an apostle to the Gentiles. In fulfillment of his commission, he had himself become an apostate, abandoning Israel’s covenant in order that he, like the Gentiles to whom he brought the gospel, might be justified in Christ (78–79). His letters were sent to Gentiles and addressed Gentile problems (23). All the world is subject to God’s law. (Paul here assumes the identification of “law” with “wisdom” found in Jewish texts

7 Gaston,

Paul and the Torah.



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[26–28].) But whereas Jews encounter that law administered directly by God within the context of the covenant, for Gentiles, it is administered by the “angels of the nations” (cf. Gal 3:19) and apart from the covenant (43): Gentiles were thus obligated to obey the law’s commands, but lacked the covenant’s mediation of divine mercy (39). When Paul speaks of the “works of the law” that cannot justify, he is not thinking of Jewish observances of the law, but of what the law itself “works” on its Gentile subjects: it brings them under a curse, makes them guilty before God, and serves as the instrument of God’s wrath (104–105, referring to Gal 3:10; Rom 3:19; 4:15). “The law actively works in the Gentile world to create a situation from which people need redemption” (106). That redemption, for Gentiles, is now available in Christ. Thus, as Philippians 3 suggests, “it is possible to have a status of righteousness from either of two sources.” For Jews, righteousness comes by “the law (in the sense of covenant)”; for Gentiles, “from the faithfulness of Christ.” Paul had himself shifted from the former path to the latter, but he does not indicate that other Jews were to do the same (136). 4. Stanley K. Stowers8 reads Romans as directed to a Gentile audience, spelling out for it the path not simply to acceptance by God but also to the “moral self-mastery” that was so highly esteemed in Greco-Roman culture (36). Competing with Paul for his readers’ allegiance were Jewish teachers (represented by the “presumptuous teacher” introduced in Rom 2:17) who advocated the observance of “works of the law” as the means to the same ends (189). The “works” intended were the moral demands of the Decalogue (278): these, however, Gentiles could not perform, since God had punished their idolatry by “allowing their passions and desires to become dominant, a loss of self-mastery” (92, referring to Rom 1:18–32). Moreover, whereas Israel “always had means of atonement” so that her sins were forgiven, God “stored up” the sins of Gentiles for the coming day of judgment (106, 176). But “Paul came to believe it unjust for God to allow gentiles to persist in this unequal relation resulting from their original rejection of God. Therefore … God had provided the faithfulness of Jesus as a means by which the long accumulation of gentile sins could be forgiven” (205). Once they are “in Christ,” Gentiles, too, experience freedom from desires and passions through the Spirit (252). But for Stowers’s (as for Gaston’s) Paul, Christ provides for Gentiles what Israel already enjoyed through her covenant (129, 190).

8 Stowers,

Rereading of Romans.

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A Paul Whose Critique Is Not of Substance Or perhaps we should say that Paul does develop a critique of Judaism, but merely as a reflex required by his christological convictions or missionary strategies. 5. Citing as his predecessors F. C. Baur, Krister Stendahl, W. D. Davies, and (above all) E. P. Sanders, Francis Watson sees his Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach as a further contribution to the scholarly task of “delutheranizing Paul” (18). Paul did not believe in salvation sola gratia, nor did he criticize Jews for attempting to “earn” their salvation. In fact, Watson suggests, the Jews whom Paul attacks in Romans 2 held a doctrine of sola gratia that led them to “live by the maxim, pecca fortiter” (112); moreover, in Romans 6, “it is precisely the notion of sola gratia that Paul excludes” (148). For Watson, the attempt to define a theological basis for Paul’s attacks on Judaism and Jewish Christianity is itself misguided: a sociological explanation is needed. Paul initially conducted a mission to non-Christian Jews, but met with little success. Concluding that God had hardened Jewish hearts, Paul redirected his energy toward a Gentile mission. To prevent a repeat of the earlier debacle, however, Paul made the strategic decision to eliminate from his Christian message the requirement to conform to the laws of Torah that offended Gentile sensibilities. The move had the effect of cutting off Paul and the Pauline communities from further fellowship with the Jewish synagogue, thus transforming Christianity from a reform movement within Judaism to a sect now severed from its Jewish roots (36–38). It also, inevitably, sparked criticism. Paul’s theological reasoning on the subject thus represents a secondary attempt to legitimate a procedure adopted on other grounds. What is essentially at issue in Galatians and Philippians is not whether one must “do good works in order to be accepted by God,” but whether the church should “be a reform-movement within the Jewish community or a sect outside it” (80). As for the Roman Christians, they were divided into two communities, one of Jewish Christians who maintained their ties with the synagogue (thus remaining a “reform-movement” within Judaism), the other of “sectarian” Christians (97). Paul’s letter to the Romans is best seen as an attempt to persuade “the Jewish congregation to separate themselves finally from the non-Christian Jewish community, and recognize the legitimacy of the Pauline congregation, which based itself on the premises of freedom from the law and separation from the synagogue” (123).



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6. Reinhold Liebers9 concludes from the first part of his study that only exegesis bearing the stamp of the Reformation could find in Paul a critique of righteousness based on works and human merit (238): where Paul rejects “works of law,” the accent is in fact on “law,” not on “works” (41–54, 92). In the second part, Liebers claims that what Paul in effect attacks is a Jewish understanding of Torah (identified with Wisdom) as mediator, not only of creation, but also of salvation: Jews saw Torah as the expression of God’s grace, transforming the heart as well as guiding the steps of God’s people (240–241). It follows that the understanding of Torah rejected by Paul – because he made the same claims for Christ – was one in which the law served as gospel (244). 7. Mikael Winninge10 expresses broad approval of the “new perspective on Paul” (213) and, in particular, of Sanders’s insistence that Paul’s depiction of the human plight developed out of his belief in “the indispensability of salvation in Christ” (309). Universal sinfulness is acknowledged throughout early Jewish materials (Winninge’s study focuses primarily on the Psalms of Solomon). Nonetheless, the “righteous” (or, more aptly, the “sinfully righteous”) are consistently distinguished from stubbornly disobedient “sinners.” “Paul simply claims that there are no righteous persons whatsoever, because all Jews and Gentiles are sinners from the outset. This is something entirely new within Judaism. … Paul’s classification of all Jews as sinners along with the Gentiles was incomprehensible from a Jewish perspective, because forgiveness was considered as a covenantal privilege, unless the border was crossed in outright apostasy” (264). The explanation, Winninge believes, is to be found in “Paul’s conviction that Jesus Christ was the saviour of all. … Since universal sinfulness was not enough to explain the need of salvation, Paul was forced to ‘make’ sin more dangerous. … It is Paul’s experience of Christ that is the source for his reflection on the dangerousness of sin” (305). 8. A student of Heikki Räisänen, Kari Kuula has published a monograph11 that leaves no doubt about its academic paternity.12 Like Räisänen, Kuula finds in Sanders’s portrayal of Judaism a reason to reexamine Paul’s polemic against the Jewish law and its practitioners; and, again like Räisänen, he finds Paul’s position strained and untenable. It is clear for Kuula (as, of course, for Sanders) that Paul rejected the law and the Jewish covenant because he believed that salvation is only to be found in Christ (206–207). From the perspective of Paul’s apocalyptic dualism, what was outside 9 Liebers,

Gesetz als Evangelium. Sinners and the Righteous. 11 Kuula, The Law, the Covenant and God’s Plan. 12  Räisänen’s work is treated briefly below. 10 Winninge,

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Christ was necessarily under the power of sin; Judaism thus became “one of the false religions of his time” (207). Difficulties arose for Paul because he nonetheless wanted to retain a measure of continuity with his Jewish past, a venture that led to dubious argumentative strategies, forced interpretations of Scripture, and artificial suggestions about the law’s place in God’s salvific plan (208). Not that Paul was a “poor thinker”: the dilemma at the root of his problems lay in the very “foundations of his theology” (209). 9. This is perhaps the least inappropriate place to introduce the important work of Terence L. Donaldson,13 though Paul’s “critique” of Judaism is not its focus. Donaldson accepts Sanders’s portrayal of first-century Judaism as characterized by “covenantal nomism”; and methodologically, Donaldson adopts and refines Sanders’s distinction between Paul’s “arguments” in favor of a particular position and his real “reasons” for holding it. In regard to Paul’s Gentile mission, however, Donaldson finds unconvincing Sanders’s suggestions for its roots (i. e., that Paul thought that the time for the “eschatological pilgrimage” of Gentiles had come, and that it was the task of his mission to promote it [12–13, 187–197]). We cannot here consider the numerous alternative proposals that Donaldson considers only to reject – other than to note that he, like other proponents of the “new perspective,” dismisses any suggestion that Paul’s mission was rooted in a newly won conviction that salvation is by faith, not works, or that Christianity provided, as Judaism did not, an answer to the universality of human sin. How, then, does Donaldson account for Paul’s mission to the Gentiles? Prior to his Damascus experience, Paul was among those Jews who believed that Gentiles could share in God’s salvation only if they became proselytes, submitting to Torah and becoming incorporated in the people of Israel. Paul himself encouraged Gentiles to do so (he “preached circumcision” [Gal 5:11]). At the same time, he perceived that faith in Jesus as Messiah and adherence to Torah were rival ways of defining the people of God. Then, as a result of his Damascus experience, Paul became convinced that Jesus was God’s Messiah and way to salvation, and hence (since he continued to see Torah as an exclusive alternative) that faith in Christ, not adherence to Torah, defined the boundaries of the people of God. As a Christian, Paul continued to fulfill his pre-Damascus vision to bring Gentiles into the community of God. He continued to understand God’s community as Israel, the family of Abraham. But faith in Christ, rather than adherence to Torah, now defined membership in the community.

13 Donaldson,

Paul and the Gentiles.



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Paul Finds Judaism Ethnocentric 10. Only a year after the publication of Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism, N. T. Wright agreed that “the real Judaism” was “based on a clear understanding of grace,” and that “good works” were meant to express “gratitude, and demonstrate that one is faithful to the covenant.”14 Pauline scholarship, Wright declared, must find other categories for interpreting Paul than “the thin, tired and anachronistic ones of Lutheran polemic.”15 Rightly understood, Paul “mount[ed] a detailed and sensitive criticism of Judaism as its advocates present it.”16 Judaism, in Wright’s reading of Paul, had come to distort its distinctive vocation. When God entered a covenant with Israel, he intended to undo the sin of Adam and its effects.17 An obedient Israel would have proved to be the “true Adam, the truly human people of the creator god,” and a “light” conveying God’s blessing to the Gentiles.18 Through Abraham’s “seed,” the nations of the world would come to be united in a “single worldwide family.”19 But Israel, no less than other nations, shared in the effects of Adam’s sin.20 Adam, confronted by a divine command, disobeyed; Israel, given the commands of Torah, “recapitulated” Adam’s sin (197, based on Rom 7:7–12), and thus was in no position to bring “light” to the Gentiles. Moreover, the “Adam” in Israel made Israel’s singular vocation the basis for Israel’s characteristic sin, the “meta-sin” (240) of boasting of her special place in God’s plan and treating the symbols of her distinctiveness (Sabbath, circumcision, the dietary laws) as “badges of superiority” (243). Israel’s sin brought on the nation the curse of the covenant spelled out in Deuteronomy 27–28, thus leading to its exile. That judgment – that exile – was believed to continue in the first century. “Roman occupation and overlordship” represented “the mode that Israel’s continuing exile had now taken” (141). Sanders’s claim that the post-Damascus Paul contrived a plight to match the solution he perceived in Christ is not, for Wright, the whole story. Paul revised his earlier notion of Israel’s plight, but in pre-Damascus days he, like other Jews, would have yearned for Israel’s redemption (260–261).

14 

Wright, “Paul of History,” 79–80. Wright, “Paul of History,” 87. 16  Wright, “Paul of History,” 82. 17  Wright, “Romans and the Theology of Paul,” 33. 18 Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 265, 267. 19 Wright, Climax of the Covenant, 150. Page references to Wright’s work in the body of the text are taken from this book. 20 Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 130. 15 

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Just as Israel was representative of all humankind, so Jesus, as Messiah, was Israel’s representative. The curse of the covenant that led to Israel’s exile and subjection to foreign overlordship reached its climax in the death of Israel’s Messiah at the hands of Roman soldiers; and so, in Messiah’s representative death, the curse of his people was exhausted (141). Moreover, his representative resurrection meant Israel’s deliverance from the “ultimate enemies” of sin and death.21 Once the curse of the covenant had been exhausted, the extension of its blessing to the Gentiles became a reality. The gift of God’s Spirit to Gentiles was the sign that the covenant had been renewed and that its blessings were available to all (154). The divine plan to unite people from all nations in a single family was evident already in the promise given to Abraham. Habakkuk 2:4 underlines that the single family of God’s people would one day be demarcated by faith, not by the boundary markers spelled out in Torah for Israel (148– 151). Hence, the fulfillment of God’s covenant involves the redefinition of “Israel” as God’s people along lines determined by grace, not race; by faith, not by the “works” (or boundary markers) of Torah. “Israel is transformed from being an ethnic people into a worldwide family” (240). Not all Jews, to be sure, are prepared to accept the transformation. Those who cling to the path of “national righteousness” and reject the gospel have both misunderstood God’s intentions and perpetuated the “meta-sin” of ethnic Israel. The Israel that, according to Romans 11:26, is destined for salvation is the single family drawn from all nations and marked by its faith (249–250). 11. No one has proven more energetic in the promotion and defense of the “new perspective on Paul” than James D. G. Dunn – who, indeed, gave it the designation by which it has become known.22 Traditional readings of Paul (we are assured) often erred by imposing sixteenth-century categories on Paul’s response to Judaism, resulting in a portrayal of Judaism that, like the medieval Catholic church, was “legalistic, dependent on human effort, and self-satisfied with the results.”23 Those misreadings may (apparently) be corrected by retaining the categories, but recognizing that first-century Jews were, after all, good Protestants and champions of grace. “The Judaism of what Sanders christened as ‘covenant nomism’ can now be seen to preach good Protestant doctrine: that grace is always prior; that human effort is ever the response to divine initiative; that good works are the fruit and not 21 Wright,

What Saint Paul Really Said, 51. Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Law, 183–206 for Dunn’s early article “The New Perspective on Paul.” 23  Dunn, “Justice of God,” 7. Cf. also Dunn, Partings of the Ways, 14. The current concern to portray first-century Judaism sympathetically, and in its own terms, is both proper and long overdue. Curiously, scholars of perspectives old and new alike have seldom shown an inclination to extend the same courtesy to medieval Catholicism. 22  See



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the root of salvation.”24 To what in Judaism, then, was Paul objecting, if not to the belief that salvation could be earned by good deeds? The gospel that Paul proclaimed was the “outworking” of the divine promise given already to (or the divine “covenant” made already with) Abraham.25 The promise designated Israel in the first place as its target, but included a blessing for the nations as well. The (universal) gospel thus represents no abandoning of the covenant with Abraham, but its planned fulfillment, inasmuch as it was God’s intention from the beginning that the divine blessing and saving initiative would one day be extended, from its initial restriction to Israel, to include all nations.26 A second crucial feature in the story of Abraham for Paul was its establishment of the principle that “acceptance by God” is “a matter wholly and solely of faith on the human side.”27 Prior to the coming of Christ, Jews as well as Gentiles lived “under the power of sin.” The law, though neither able nor intended to overthrow sin’s dominion,28 found its primary function in defining what constitutes sin and in making evident, when its commands were broken, sin’s nature as transgression against God.29 A secondary, temporary function of the law featured its sacrificial cult, which provided the people of Israel with a means to cover their sin and remove their guilt until such time as transgression “could be dealt with definitively and finally in the cross of Christ.”30 Yet another subordinate role of the law was fulfilled through the commands that restricted Israel’s contact with the Gentile nations. In this way, the law protected the people of Israel, who were “like a child growing up in an evil world,” from the “idolatry and the lower moral standards prevalent in the Gentile world.”31 This last-mentioned role of the law, too, was meant as an interim measure, appropriate only until the promise given to Abraham could be fulfilled in Christ. But Paul found himself confronted with Jewish Christians who demanded that all who would belong to the people of God, including Gentile believers in Christ, must still observe the laws that had long separated Jews from Gentiles (i. e., the “boundary-markers” of circumcision, food and festival laws). In Paul’s terminology, these people advocated “justification by the works of the law.” In principle, the expression included 24 

Dunn, “Justice of God,” 7–8; cf. also 18. Epistle to the Galatians, 165. 26 Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Law, 197. 27 Dunn, Theology of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, 83. 28 Dunn, Epistle to the Galatians, 195. 29 Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle, 133–134. Page references to Dunn’s work in the body of the text are taken from this book. 30 Dunn, Epistle to the Galatians, 190. 31 Dunn, Epistle to the Galatians, 199. 25 Dunn,

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all the law’s demands; under circumstances in which specific laws distinguishing Jews from Gentiles were the issue, however, the focus was clearly on these boundary-marking ordinances (358). Paul’s response, the assertion of justification by faith rather than by the “works of the law,” thus did not address the question of how an individual may find peace with God, or whether salvation is to be earned by human works – to that extent, the “Lutheran” tradition has misread the context and point of Paul’s polemic. The operative question for Paul was rather on what terms Gentiles were to be admitted to the people of God, and whether particular “works” required of Israel in the Mosaic law are to be observed by all God’s people now that the Messiah has come (355).32 In the course of the controversy, however, Paul himself came to the realization that “if entry into the covenant is by faith, the same principle should apply to life within the covenant; membership of the covenant people should not be tied to or be made to depend on particular rulings regarding food and table-fellowship; it should depend solely on faith.”33 “Human dependence on divine grace had to be unqualified or else it was not Abraham’s faith, the faith through which God could work his own work. That was why Paul was so fiercely hostile to the qualification which he saw confronting him all the time in any attempt to insist on works of the law as a necessary accompaniment of or addition to faith. God would not justify, could not sustain in relationship with him, those who did not rely wholly on him. Justification was by faith, by faith alone” (379).34 Here, of course, Dunn’s Paul differs little from his “Lutheran” counterpart. Still, Dunn insists that the Jews who opposed Paul did not think the “works of the law” a way to earn salvation, and the main thrust of Paul’s attack was rather on “the restrictiveness implicit” in their emphasis on “works of the law” (372). 12. Dunn’s (seemingly boundless) energy has been tapped by numerous graduate students. Don Garlington’s revision of a dissertation supervised by Dunn (‘The Obedience of Faith’: A Pauline Phrase in Historical Context) seeks to demonstrate, in writings from the Apocrypha, the pervasiveness of “covenantal nomism” and of a commitment on the part of the various writers “to the whole of the Mosaic covenant and its laws” – a commitment that nonetheless focused on the distinctive “badges” of the covenant, namely, “circumcision, the sabbath/festival days and the food laws of Israel” (254). 32 

Cf. Dunn, “Justice of God,” 4–5. Partings, 133; cf. his Jesus, Paul, and the Law, 162. 34  Cf. Dunn, Theology, 372: “Paul expounds justification by faith in a way which not only addresses the argument over the terms of Gentile acceptance, but also presses beyond to provide a fundamental statement of human dependence on God.” 33 Dunn,



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He thus provides a historical context for Paul’s critique (construed much as Dunn understands it) of those who would impose these requirements on his converts. Garlington’s more recent monograph (Faith, Obedience, and Perseverance: Aspects of Paul’s Letter to the Romans), though by no means treating only issues related to the “new perspective,” does insist that what Paul opposed in Judaism was its “narrowly nationalistic” understanding of God’s purposes in history (8), its restriction of God’s covenant favor to the people of Israel (46–47). Indeed, for Garlington’s Paul, Israel clung to its Torah with an “idolatrous attachment” (39, emphasis Garlington’s): Torah had become Israel’s “new idol,” preventing Jews from coming to that “obedience of faith” in Christ that made one a true “doer of the law” (71, referring to Rom 2:13). 13. Bruce Longenecker’s dissertation (Eschatology and the Covenant: A Comparison of 4 Ezra and Romans 1–11) claims that both Paul and the author of 4 Ezra abandoned the “ethnocentric covenantalism” (a designation Longenecker prefers to Sanders’s “covenant nomism”) prevalent in early Judaism, believing it wrong “in the light of their respective crisis events” (278–279). Paul, for his part, replaced its answer to universal sinfulness with a christocentric solution (280). Longenecker stresses that ethnocentric covenantalism, not Jewish attempts to earn salvation by works, was the target of Paul’s polemic. He allows, however, that Paul appears to expand his criticism in places (Rom 4:1–5; cf. 9:11–12, 32; 11:5–6) to include a charge of legalism (213–214). Longenecker’s more recent The Triumph of Abraham’s God: The Transformation of Identity in Galatians represents a bold attempt to mediate between different readings of Galatians: between the “apocalyptic” reading represented by Beker and Martyn and the “salvation-history” reading found in Wright and Dunn, and between traditional “Lutheran” interpretations and those informed by the “new perspective.” With regard to the latter dispute, Longenecker believes that the “new perspective” provides the basis for a truer understanding of the position of Paul’s opponents and of the issues debated in Galatia. Nonetheless, a number of themes central to “Lutheran” approaches are indeed to be found in Paul’s response: the view that the law cannot convey life because humans cannot obey it perfectly; that nomistic observance takes place within the framework of a “fleshly” existence and continues to express human rebellion against God; that humanity’s bondage is such that human activity comes to nothing and only God’s invading grace can provide redemption (180–181). Moreover, Longenecker repeats his earlier claim that, “while the kind of Judaism that Paul seeks to undermine in Romans is ethnocentric … rather than legalistic, he nonetheless finds that, from a Christian perspective [i. e., once saving grace has been restricted to

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those in Christ], Judaism’s ethnocentric covenantalism reduces to nothing else than legalism” (140).35 In none of these cases does Paul portray Jewish covenantalism on its own terms. The Judaism of Paul’s depiction is Judaism as it “really” is – reality being determined by Paul’s reconfigured, Christian worldview (182). 14. Some years earlier, John M. G. Barclay – not a student of Dunn – had reached conclusions of a similar vein in his Obeying the Truth: Paul’s Ethics in Galatians. In Galatians, Paul’s polemic against “works of the law” is not an attack on “works” as such, nor does Paul “divorce ‘believing’ from ‘doing’” (82); indeed, believers themselves “are not free from the obligation to work – to turn their faith into loving behaviour” (94; cf. 236). References to those who live “under the law” carry no overtones of “legalistic selfrighteousness” (116 n. 24), nor is life “according to the flesh” marked by “self-seeking and self-reliance” (197). “Paul opposes ‘the works of the law’ in Galatians because they represent imposing a Jewish life-style … on his Gentile converts” (239). He “renounces law-observant Judaism not because it is legalistic but because it is nationalistic” (240). But “while Paul is not building a general theological contrast between salvation by human achievement and salvation by divine gift, he is propounding a far-reaching contrast between human values and traditions on the one hand and the sovereign initiative of God on the other” (241). In Philippians, too, Judaism is seen as “too firmly wedded to human cultural and social values” (243). In Paul’s attack on Jewish national pride in Romans, he “allows himself some broader reflection on the need for mankind to recognize its insufficiency before God; and in the course of ruling out the adequacy of Jewish works of the law Paul reflects on how God’s grace is highlighted and clarified when it is independent of works” (246–247). Such passages provide the basis on which the Pastoral Epistles can see the “general contrast between ‘righteous works’ and ‘God’s grace’ as the heart of the gospel” (251). 15. William S. Campbell36 is convinced by the work of E. P. Sanders that Paul did not fault Jews for pursuing a wrong goal (righteousness by works) or for pursuing a right goal in a wrong (i. e., legalistic) way; “rather they failed to believe in the Gospel because they sought their own righteousness, ie a righteousness available only to Jews alone, only to those who possess the law. For Paul it is of the essence of the Gospel that it is available to 35  Sanders

himself makes a similar point: “Only if one simply equates ‘the word of Christ’ … with grace can one say that [Jews] rejected grace. Paul himself very likely made such a connection, and thus he can accuse his compatriots of rejecting the Christian gospel (Rom. 10:14–21) and of rejecting grace (11:6; cf. 6:14 f.)” (Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 157). 36 Campbell, Paul’s Gospel.



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Gentiles on the same terms as Jews” (100). With Dunn, Campbell believes that Paul directed his polemic against the view that the particular “works of the law” that served as “badges of the covenant” had to be adopted by Gentiles if they were to belong to the community of God’s people (126– 127). For Paul, it was axiomatic that faith in Christ is the only criterion for such membership: he “[denied] ultimate significance to ethnic distinctions” (100). Nonetheless, his theology “validated equally the right of Gentiles to live as Gentiles and Jews to live as Jews in Christ” (101). Against Watson, Campbell claims that “Paul’s strategy in Romans [was] to seek the social reorientation of both Jewish and Gentile Christians through the Gospel rather than the separation of church and synagogue” (130). While Paul attempted to be even-handed, refusing to side with either the Jewish or Gentile Christians, he did attempt to give a positive view of Judaism (133); and texts like Romans 11:16–17; 15:27 refute the claim that Paul wrote as a “sectarian” intending to displace the distinctively Jewish presence from the church (142). 16. Daniel Boyarin sees his monograph on Paul37 as “part of the movement to thoroughly discredit the Reformation interpretation of Paul and particularly the description of Judaism on which it is based” (11). Where he departs from Sanders, he insists, is in his own belief that “Paul was motivated by a critique of Judaism” (11), a critique originating in a disquietude that preceded and, indeed, precipitated Paul’s Damascus experience: “in Paul, … the agony preceded the ecstasy” (122). In Boyarin’s view, the pre-Christian Saul shared with “many Jews of the first century” a “sense that something was not right” in their ancestral faith (39). On the one hand, Torah “claims to be the text of the One True God of all the world” (39). “Biblical Israelite tradition” itself contains “certain universalistic tendencies” (52), and these were naturally nourished by the “general Hellenistic longing for the universal and the univocal” (24), the “Hellenistic desire for the One, which among other things produced an ideal of a universal human essence, beyond difference and hierarchy” (7). On the other hand, Torah is preoccupied with the “history of one particular People,” and its prescriptions serve to mark off their particularity (39). The tension between “narrow ethnocentrism and universalist monotheism” in Judaism (52) was overcome for Paul by a revelation mediated by the Christ event. Christ himself had both a physical and a spiritual nature: both have value, though the former is subordinate to the latter. Here, for Paul, was the “hermeneutic key” (29) resolving the tension within Judaism, for Paul saw

37 Boyarin,

Radical Jew.

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in Christ’s death and resurrection a disclosure of the transcendence of the spiritual and universal over the physical and particular (39). The transcended realm is, in Paul’s terminology, that of the “flesh.” “Israel according to the flesh” is the historical Israel, marked by its literal interpretation and observance of the law, an observance expressed, moreover, in the physical acts prescribed by the law: the “works of the law” that marked off the Jews as God’s special people (53). Paul’s critique of Judaism centered on the latter’s devotion “to the literal, physical carrying out of the Law as opposed to the inner movements of its spiritual referent” (81–82). “What concerned Paul … was the literal observance of the Law insofar as it frustrated what Paul took to be the moral and religious necessity of humankind, namely to erase all distinctions between ethnos and ethnos, sex and sex and become one in Christ’s spiritual body” (85). “The whole purpose of Christ’s coming … was to free us from the practices of Israel in the flesh by teaching us of their allegorical meaning for Israel in the spirit, through his crucifixion which revealed his own dual nature and thus figured our transformation” (115). Bearing this in mind, we can understand how Paul can speak of the law as both abrogated and obligatory for Christians: the “literal, carnal sense” of the law – that expressed in prescriptions of circumcision, kashruth, and the Sabbath – is done away, whereas the law’s “spiritual sense – the universal Law of Christ, of love, of faith” – is affirmed (132). 17. Kent L. Yinger has examined the topic of “judgment according to deeds” in both Judaism and Paul.38 As evidence for Judaism, he looks at, in addition to the Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the literature from Qumran; the results, he believes, essentially confirm the work of Sanders (95). Divine judgment in this literature does not involve an inquiry to determine who the sinners and the righteous are; it simply reveals the nature of those judged (93). Nor are the righteous those whose individual righteous deeds, viewed “mechanically or atomistically,” outweigh any evil they may have done; works are conceived and judged rather as “a unitary whole revealing one’s inner character or faith” (95–96; cf. 25). Those of the righteous are “the observable manifestations of the covenant loyalty of the unseen heart” (62). On such a view, competition between the “faith” of the “righteous” and their “works” is inconceivable: faith and works “represent two sides of the single coin of human response in the light of God’s gracious covenantal arrangement” (96). Yinger believes that “divine judgment according to deeds is no less a fundamental axiom for Paul the apostle of Christ than it was for Saul the Pharisee” (182); and the “deeds” are similarly understood, not as merits by 38 Yinger,

Paul, Judaism, and Judgment According to Deeds.



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which one gains entry into a particular status with God, but as the means of recognizing a person’s inner character (159). Nor can any distinction be drawn between Paul and Judaism on the relation between grace and works (cf. 161, 192): “the righteousness upon which salvation depends is by grace through faith from start to finish, and receives its necessary confirmation in the outworking of obedience to be judged at the end” (228). Where Paul does differ from Judaism is, first, in the belief that “membership in the eschatological people of God no longer has anything to do with Jewishness …, but is by faith in Christ” (179). In Judaism, there was at least a potential for presuming upon one’s Jewishness, and Paul characterizes his diatribal opponent in Romans 2 along these lines; such presumption was not, however, “characteristic of the second temple period” (180). Second, Paul “places ethical righteousness much more clearly within the context of his pneumatology than was the case in Judaism. … Because of Paul’s confidence in the Spirit’s ability and readiness to bear fruit in the believers’ lives, he could look with confidence toward the final judgment according to works” (203).

Paul Finds Judaism Reliant on Human Works In Sanders’s understanding of “covenantal nomism,” it will be recalled, obedience is an indispensable condition for the enjoyment of “life” and salvation in Judaism, but not its cause: obedience (“works”) maintains one’s position within a covenant established by God’s grace. For Sanders’s Paul, the relationship between “works” and “grace” is no different. The scholars to whom we now turn think Paul saw in Judaism’s reliance on “works” its decisive shortcoming.39 Heikki Räisänen believes that Paul’s critique was based upon a distorted understanding of Judaism. For other scholars, however, Paul’s claim that Jews had not lived up to the covenant’s requirements of righteousness articulated a perception widely shared even among his non-Christian compatriots (Thielman, Eskola).40 Still others think that Paul’s interpretation was arrived at on distinctly Christian grounds: either Christ’s atoning death was believed to have invalidated (or to have shown the purely symbolic nature of) Judaism’s rites of atonement, leaving non-Christian Jews under the law’s demands but without its means for forgiveness (Schreiner and Das, though the latter finds analogous positions in Judaism); or, in the light of Christ’s atoning death, human nature was assessed much 39  As noted above, Dunn, Longenecker, and Barclay see Paul moving in this direction, though they find his main critique of Judaism to be another. 40  Cf. also the position, summarized above, of N. T. Wright.

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more pessimistically by Paul than by other Jews, and its corruption was thought to prevent untransformed humans from showing even the modicum of obedience required by covenantal nomism (Stuhlmacher, Laato, Aletti, and Seifrid).41 In the view of these scholars, Paul sees salvation as a gift of God’s grace to which humans, perverse as they are, cannot contribute. For our final group of scholars, however, Paul found it important in principle that human beings rely exclusively on divine goodness for all their needs – and he deemed Judaism, in its reliance on “works,” to have departed from this principle (Davies, Thurén, Kruse, Bell, Smiles, Eastman, and Kim). 18. Heikki Räisänen42 occupies a distinctive place in the debate roused by the “new perspective.” On the one hand, he is among the most whole-hearted in his endorsement of Sanders’s depiction of Judaism: for his own “quest” in these matters, “the publication of Sanders’s illuminating work was like a gift from heaven” (v), and Räisänen suspects that it will be “extremely hard for anyone to refute Sanders’s interpretation of Tannaitic Judaism, as far as the main lines are concerned.”43 Following Sanders, Räisänen believes that salvation in Judaism was perceived “as God’s act,” and “the theme of gratuity with regard to salvation is conspicuously present in Judaism” (178–179). But whereas Sanders thinks Paul did not in fact charge Judaism with being legalistic, Räisänen agrees (to this extent) with Paul’s “Lutheran” interpreters in thinking that he did. Not that Paul speaks as though smugness, self-righteousness, and boasting in one’s achievement were characteristic sins of Jews; but Paul does (Räisänen believes) distort Judaism by suggesting that the law was its “way of salvation”; and Paul misleadingly contrasts the “works” required by the Jewish law with reliance on divine grace (162–164). In Räisänen’s terms, “grace, faith, promise, and Spirit are, according to [Paul], something diametrically opposed to the law. The entirety of Paul’s argument is, indeed, little more than a constant reiteration of this axiom.”44 Nor is that all. Räisänen believes that Paul himself is not consistent in propounding salvation by grace. Like the rabbis, he “speaks of right behaviour as necessary for salvation” (184), of judgment as according to deeds. Grievous sins lead to condemnation even for Christians. The pattern is precisely what we find in Judaism, and Paul’s doctrine of grace differs only from the Judaism of his own distorted representation. This, for Räisänen, is only one of a number of areas in which Paul’s theology of the law proves incoherent and self-contradictory. 41 

Cf. also the position of Winninge, summarized above. Paul and the Law. Page references to Räisänen’s work in the body of the text are from this book. 43  Räisänen, “Legalism,” 66. 44  Räisänen, “Legalism,” 72. 42 



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19. Other scholars, however, think that Paul was not the only Jew convinced that his people’s habitual failure to submit to God’s law had turned their covenant’s blessing into a curse. Frank Thielman,45 while agreeing with Sanders that Paul did not attribute to Judaism “a doctrine of salvation by works” (188), thinks that some Jews believed that God had left to them the choice between life through obeying his commands and death should they choose disobedience (Sir 15:15–17; Pss. Sol. 9:4–5; cf. Deut 30:11–20). That such Jews were boastful of their righteousness does not follow, still less that they lived in fear lest their evil deeds should prove to outweigh their good at the final judgment. Nonetheless, they thought that their efforts must be added to God’s grace if they were to obtain his favor at the last (66, 238). Paul’s understanding was different, but not for that reason unjewish. Though covenantal texts in Leviticus (like ch. 26) and Deuteronomy (like chs. 28–31) do indeed speak of Israel’s choice between obedience and disobedience as determinative of the people’s “life” or “death,” the same texts anticipate that Israel will opt for the path of disobedience and thereby bring upon itself the curse of God’s covenant. Such, moreover, is the story of Israel as reflected in the historical books of the Jewish scriptures, the Psalms, and, above all, the prophets. Repeatedly, the prophets denounce the rebelliousness that God’s people show in transgressing his law, declare their sinfulness incorrigible, yet find hope for the future in a decisive divine intervention. This understanding of Israel’s history and eschatological hope remained current in Paul’s day. Far from concocting an artificial dilemma to suit his Christology, then, Paul merely appropriated a “plight to solution” pattern well established in the scriptures and thinking of Second Temple Judaism. His “deeply held conviction” that the law cannot justify because, outside of the eschatological community, its demands cannot be met was, in fact, a common understanding among Jews of his day (239). His claim that “those who rely on works of the law are under a curse” (Gal 3:10) was not even controversial in his day, since it was well known that “membership in the people of God, as it is defined by the Mosaic covenant, is membership in a people with a plight – they are cursed by the very law that defines them as God’s people, because they, as a people and as individuals, have not kept the law” (126–127). Paul did, to be sure, point out to those other Jews who thought their obedience to God’s law a factor in their approval at God’s judgment that the human condition as Scripture describes it is bleaker than they imagine; God’s gracious intervention alone can redeem us (188). This insistence in Romans and Galatians is broadened in Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles to a general affirmation of salvation as the gift of a gracious 45 Thielman,

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God in which human effort has no role (229, 234, 244). Yet it would be wrong to conclude that Jews in general ascribed salvific merit to their deeds. Rather, Paul’s own position was standard in Judaism – with the difference, of course, that for Paul the various communities of Christian believers represented the eschatologically restored people of God for which others still looked to the future, a people whose sins had been forgiven, from whom the curse of the law had been removed, and to whom the Spirit of God had been granted to enable them to do God’s will (245). 20. A Finnish scholar, Timo Eskola,46 attempts to trace the relation between Jewish notions of “predestination”47 and Pauline soteriology. In Second Temple Judaism, the problems of theodicy induced by the recurrent crises that had befallen the nation had led to a change in the way the covenantal promises were perceived. The covenant’s blessings were hardly the lot of all Jews, and, indeed, the whole nation was often thought to be living in sin and subject to God’s judgment (31, 51). A kind of “soteriological dualism” emerged (40), whose operative principle we may label “prospective predestination” (47): Jews who continued in sin would face God’s punishment (though neither their sin nor their succumbing to judgment were thought to be predetermined), while those who used the opportunity granted every sinner to repent and live in obedience to the law48 would find God merciful. In Paul’s more radicalized scheme, rooted in a more pessimistic anthropology, all humankind is enslaved to sin and thus “predestined” for judgment (127–128). Humans can do nothing to alter the judgment or their own predicament; salvation must be “based on God’s determination and God’s own action” (164). But to Paul’s notion of a universal “predestination” to judgment must be added a “Christological concept of predestination” that is likewise “universal” and “aims at the salvation of men”: everyone who responds to the call of God in the gospel will be saved (171, 176–177). “Ungodly mankind has been destined for the wrath of God, but one can find salvation through faith in Christ” (178).

46 Eskola,

Theodicy and Predestination. Eskola, “predestination” is found wherever a criterion is set forth by which a person’s eternal salvation or damnation is decided (6). It is, of course, unfortunate that the word does not readily convey to readers what the author means to say. 48  They thus took on the Avodat Israel, the service of God prescribed in the Mosaic law (including, with no sharp distinction between them, both its ritual and its moral components). Paul’s references to the “works of the law” have this whole “service” in mind (his focus is by no means limited to “identity markers”); but, in keeping with his pessimistic anthropology and the perception that humans are completely unable to carry out God’s precepts, he made the astounding claim that “no human being will be justified by Avodat Israel” (220; cf. Eskola, “Avodat Israel,” 175–197. 47  For



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21. We turn now to scholars for whom Paul’s conviction that Judaism wrongly relied on human works was a distinctly Christian perception. Thomas R. Schreiner49 grants that Sanders’s work should caution us against naïve portrayals of Palestinian Judaism (“it is not evident that rabbis weighed merits against demerits” [115]), but does not think it has established that the legalism against which Luther and Paul protested was not to be found in Palestinian Judaism. In the case of neither Luther nor Paul did those whom they attacked rely on their own achievements to the exclusion of any role by divine grace; in both cases, however, they believed that humans must contribute to their attaining of eternal life (94–95). As Luther correctly perceived, Paul’s insistence that justification is not by the “works of the law” reflects his exclusion of any such contribution. Paul’s point is missed when his formulation is thought to be directed merely against Jewish exclusivism, with its emphasis on the particular laws that defined Jewish identity.50 Paul’s charge in Romans 2 is that Jews are liable for divine judgment because they have transgressed God’s moral demands, not because they exclude Gentiles and trumpet Jewish prerogatives (55–56). Moreover, it is clear from the beginning of Romans 4 that Paul thinks human works in general can play no part in justification (54–55, 101). In a number of other Pauline texts, too, the alternatives of salvation by “doing” and by “believing” (without “doing”) are set forth, and the latter alone deemed viable (60, 107, 125). Not that “works” are themselves wrong, or that one who fulfilled all that the law requires would not be recognized as righteous in God’s sight (44).51 Perfect obedience, however, is what the law demands (45, 63–64); and that no one can obey the law perfectly was both the common Jewish understanding in Paul’s day (64) and a natural conclusion to draw from the scriptural record of Israel’s persistent failure to obey God’s law (49). For Jews, to be sure, the requirement of perfect obedience was academic, since the law itself provided for the atonement of sins. But Paul believed that, in the light of the “definitive atonement” provided by Jesus’ death on the cross, the Old Testament sacrifices can no longer atone (44). Indeed, the need for Christ’s atoning work suggests that the Old Testament sacrifices were never more than provisional, intended to point to Christ rather than themselves provide final forgiveness (44, 62–64). The Mosaic covenant as a whole had an interim character (124). For a time, it was intended to keep Jews untainted by pagan practices and to show that, without the Spirit, people are powerless to observe God’s law (171, 49 Schreiner, The Law and Its Fulfilment. Page references to Schreiner’s work in the body of the text are from this book. 50  Cf. Schreiner, “‘Works of Law’ in Paul,” 225–231. 51  Cf. Schreiner, “‘Works of Law’ in Paul,” 238–239.

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173). Now, in one sense, it has passed away – though, in another sense, the Mosaic covenant “remain[s] authoritative for the church of Christ” (160). Its moral norms remain in force for believers (149, 154, 171): Paul took these moral demands seriously, believing that people will be judged by their works (184–186). Of course, the unregenerate cannot produce works that God will approve. But “the saving work of Jesus Christ radically changes people,” and, as a result, they now perform the good works “necessary for salvation” – though, since these deeds follow the transformation wrought by Christ’s salvific work, they can hardly be said to “earn salvation”; rather, they furnish evidence that salvation has indeed been granted (203).52 Nor is the obedience even of Christians ever perfect prior to their “full redemption”: it will, however, be “significant, substantial, and observable” (204). 22. A. Andrew Das,53 like Schreiner, believes that Paul understood the law to demand perfect obedience of those who would attain life through its commands. Das goes further, however, in challenging Sanders’s view that Jews thought differently. He examines several pre-70 Jewish sources (Jubilees, the works of Philo, and Qumran literature) and concludes that God’s demands are never set aside, that right conduct is always required. In Tannaitic literature, too, at least certain rabbis declared that God’s judgment was strict and demanded perfect obedience, though others thought that those would be approved whose good deeds outweighed their evil. Admittedly, the demand for perfect obedience was made within a framework of grace marked by election and by measures that atoned for human failures (39 n. 100). Yet “the very existence of a system of atonement shows that any act contrary to God’s law, even the least infraction, had to be rectified in some way; each of God’s laws demands obedience” (43–44). Das holds, furthermore (and, again, together with Schreiner), that for Paul it is unthinkable, in the light of Christ’s salvific work, that the Old Testament sacrifices atone for sin. Das goes further: the whole gracious framework of Judaism (election, covenant, sacrifices of atonement) has collapsed for Paul: the apostle consistently denies “any salvific or life-giving capacity in the old/Mosaic covenant” (8). Without its gracious framework, Judaism is left with a law demanding perfect obedience of its adherents, who will be judged solely by their achievements (214 n. 76). In Paul’s eyes, then, Judaism is indeed legalistic – though only because he has excluded from Judaism the framework of grace within which non-Christian Jews generally thought themselves to be living. Yet Paul’s position should not be 52 Schreiner quotes approvingly C.  F. D. Moule’s distinction between the view of Palestinian Judaism (good works are the “means of ‘staying in’ [the community of salvation]”) and that of Paul (good works are a “symptom of ‘staying in’”) (203 n. 69). 53 Das, Paul, the Law, and the Covenant.



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dismissed as idiosyncratic: Das examines a series of Jewish works (4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch, 2 Enoch, and Testament of Abraham) from the post-70 period in which, because of the catastrophic outcome of the war with Rome and because of the pressures of diaspora living, the election and covenantal framework of Judaism are similarly displaced by an accent on the law’s demands and on strict judgment according to deeds. The roots of such a position are to be found in the earlier insistence on complete compliance with God’s law. When the covenantal framework of that demand disappears from view, legalism is left. Finally, Das, like Schreiner, believes Paul finds the “works of the law” inadequate for salvation because humans cannot measure up to the law’s demand for perfect obedience. Das agrees with Dunn that Paul attacked a perceived Jewish preoccupation with ethnic identity; but he finds that Dunn strains unconvincingly to deny the obvious import of texts that rule out any role for human “works” in salvation. The need for such exegetic contortions disappears once one realizes that, for Jews, the law demands full obedience, that God judges humans according to their deeds, and that these become the decisive convictions in Judaism for those who believe, like Paul, that Judaism’s covenantal framework of grace has been displaced. 23. Peter Stuhlmacher claims that representatives of the “new perspective” obscure the main problem Paul addresses in Romans. The fundamental issue for Paul is “whether Jews and Gentiles will or will not survive before God’s throne of judgment.”54 That final judgment is in view throughout Romans 1:18–3:20 (60–61). The passage is “a relentless analysis of the culpability of Gentiles and Jews in the judgment. In the final judgment, … no Jew or Gentile will be able to claim that he or she has been a righteous doer of the will of God. Instead all will stand convicted as transgressors of the law” (42). When Paul rejects the “works of the law” as a means of justification, he means that “all attempts of humans in the final judgment to build upon their own righteousness derived from the law are futile” (43; cf. 64): this assessment is part of Paul’s post-Damascus reevaluation of the human condition by which he came to see the rule of sin as so powerful that human beings cannot, by force of will and moral effort, free themselves from its grip.55 Jewish confidence in the law and in the human capacity to fulfill it were likewise now seen to be illusory.56 But, as Paul goes on to claim in 3:21–30, “God himself by his grace has provided the legal basis for the justification of Jews and Gentiles in the atoning death of Jesus. … Because Christ went 54 Stuhlmacher, Revisiting Paul’s Doctrine, 43. Page references to Stuhlmacher’s work in the body of the text are taken from this book. 55  Cf. Stuhlmacher, Theologie, 263–264, 280. 56  Cf. Stuhlmacher, Theologie, 264, 341.

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to death for them vicariously, they are spared the death sentence and may rather share in the dominion of Christ” (61).57 Justification “means at its core the creative act of justice whereby the one God justifies the individual ungodly person … for the sake of Jesus’ atoning death” (68). Still, when rightly seen in the context of Paul’s apocalyptic vision, the goal of Paul’s doctrine lies not in the justification of individuals, but “in the achievement of God’s justice in heaven and on earth, that is, in the reconciliation of the cosmos and the establishment” of God’s kingdom (52).58 24. Timo Laato59 sees the “greatest weakness in [Sanders’s] argumentation” to be his “inadequate coverage of the question of the capacity of humankind” (62). In Judaism, human beings are considered to have “free will”: a capacity both to choose and to do good rather than evil (67, 73). Admittedly, they are born with a propensity to disobedience, but it falls short of a compulsion (73). For Paul, on the other hand, the sin of Adam introduced into the world the dominion of sin – “sin” here referring not simply to “the multitude of individual, concrete transgressions” actually committed, but to the “wretched state of calamity” in which humans find themselves unable to do, or even to choose, the good (75, referring to Rom 5:12). Clearly, then, the “anthropological presuppositions of the Jewish and the Pauline pattern of religion” differ markedly from each other: “the former is based on human free will, while the latter is founded on human depravity” (146). The difference in anthropology is matched by one in soteriology (167). In Judaism, “salvation requires human cooperation” (150). The generation of the Exodus entered the covenant by accepting the Torah of their own free will (an acceptance not matched, according to a well-known tradition, by Gentiles, who proved unwilling to part with their sins); later generations of Jews, though born into the covenant, must subsequently – and “consciously” – “take up the yoke of the kingdom of heaven”: so, too, must Gentiles who become proselytes to enter the covenant (148–150). Moreover, those within the covenant must fulfill the law if they would gain a place in the future world (157) – and (this is, of course, the point) it is within their capacity to adequately do so. For Paul, however, God himself must call into being the new creation. Faith does not replace the “works of the law” as the required human contribution for salvation; rather (as 2 Cor 4:6 shows) “God acts creatively by the Gospel and calls forth the faith” in a way that “excludes human cooperation totally” (151–152, noting also 1 Cor 1:28; Rom 4:17; 10:17). Elsewhere (Phil 1:29; cf. 3:12b) Paul “classifies faith explicitly as a 57  Cf. Stuhlmacher, Theologie, 296. Also his Reconciliation, Law, and Righteousness, 94–109. 58  Cf. Stuhlmacher, Theologie, 340. 59 Laato, Paul and Judaism.



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gift of God’s grace” (152). Nor does Paul think that those called to faith ever reach a stage in their “spiritual development” in which they can “fulfil the law by [their] own will power. By faith [they] have placed [themselves] completely outside the field of human action” (160). When Paul, then, criticizes Jewish soteriology, he cites its “anthropocentric” as well as its “antichristological” implications. The two belong inevitably together (198). 25. Jean-Noël Aletti’s studies of Romans show full awareness of the work of E. P. Sanders: Sanders’s portrayal of Judaism as based on “covenantal nomism” is warmly endorsed, and Aletti agrees that Paul himself understood Judaism very much as Sanders has described it. For Aletti, however, Paul engaged “covenantal nomism” in ways more fundamental and forceful than Sanders would have us believe. In the epistle to the Romans, Aletti sees an extended work of “deconstruction” in which Jewish understandings of the nature and function of the law are first undermined, then replaced by a Christian configuration.60 Here we note only a few key illustrations of Paul’s procedure as Aletti understands it. For Aletti, Romans 1:16–17 represents the main propositio developed in the argument of the epistle.61 The first main section that follows (1:18–4:25) elaborates on the thesis that Jews and Greeks alike are justified by faith alone. It may be divided into two subsections. The first, 1:18–3:20, deals – on the basis of expectations and ideas found within Judaism itself62 – with the operative principles of divine retribution, and anticipates the obvious Jewish objection to Paul’s propositio: grace and justification, a “covenantal nomist” would point out, are already to be found within the Mosaic system; indeed, apart from its commands and its provisions for pardon, righteousness is unthinkable. In the second subsection (3:21–4:25), Paul develops his own thesis, on the basis of his own theology, that justification is by faith alone, apart from the works of the Mosaic law.63 The propositio with which the first section opens (1:18) announces God’s opposition, not to the sins of all human beings, but to all ungodliness and wickedness (63). The thesis is surely unexceptionable to Jewish readers, though formulated without any reference to differences between Jews and Gentiles in a way that contributes to the leveling of such distinctions (62). In the first sixteen verses of chapter 2, Paul establishes that a decisive line cannot be drawn between those (Jews) who know God’s will because they have the Mosaic law and those (Gentiles) who do not know it; the latter, 60 Aletti, Israël et la Loi, 292–294. Page references to Aletti’s work in the body of the text are taken from this book. 61  Aletti, “Présence,” 15–17. 62  Aletti, “Justice de Dieu,” 362–363. 63  Aletti, “Romans,” 1557–1558.

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without the law but through their consciences, have a conception of what is right (55).64 If God declares righteous those who obey the law (so 2:13), must he not – impartial as he is – approve as well those non-Jews who follow their conscience (56)?65 Paul’s point in 2:14–15 is not to affirm that such good Gentiles exist, but to insist on the principle that a God who is impartial must judge Jews and Gentiles in the same way (56–57). In 2:17–24, Paul is by no means saying that all Jews are guilty of the sins listed, but merely that some Jews are and that, as such, they cannot be judged by God any differently than Gentile sinners (58–59, 64). By the end of chapter 2, Paul has established that the sole criterion for determining who is righteous is the “circumcision of the heart” – and that such a category is by no means the private preserve of Jews (60). It is first in chapter 3 that Paul declares the universality of sin’s dominion (3:4, 9, 12, 19).66 Only God can pronounce such a verdict (64), so Paul establishes the point by citing scriptures that speak, first, of the universality of human sinfulness (3:10–12), then of the perversity of all things human (3:13–18).67 If, as Scripture insists, Jews no less than Gentiles are “sinners,” dominated by the power of sin and liable to God’s judgment, then the provisions of the Mosaic law for atonement and forgiveness have clearly proved ineffective (3:19–20) – and it is “apart from” them68 that Jews no less than Gentiles must be justified (60, 65). That justification is by faith, and apart from the works of the Mosaic law, is then declared in the propositio of Romans 3:21–22 and developed in the argumentative unit that it introduces (3:21–4:25). The “works” that Paul means to exclude are those demanded by the Mosaic law: Abraham was justified without them (he was, after all, uncircumcised at the time he was declared righteous), and so must be the “children” whom he was promised. Arguing from Scripture, Paul thus rules out the Jewish “path to righteousness” through the law.69 His point, however, goes still deeper. 64 

Aletti, “Romains 2,” 165–166; also “Justice de Dieu,” 369. Aletti, “Romains 2,” 166–167. 66  Aletti, “Rm 1,18–3,20,” 50–53. 67  Aletti, “Romans,” 1565. 68  The law’s provisions for atonement are surely part of the “law” that Paul insists can have no part in justification (3:21–22). Paul does not pause at this point in his argument to ask why these provisions were given. Nonetheless, his borrowing of terms from the Jewish sacrificial cult in 3:25 presupposes that he interpreted its rites typologically. They thus served to prefigure Christ’s death on the cross and to prophesy redemption through him (Aletti, Comment Dieu est-il juste?, 237–239; cf. “Romains 2,” 160–161). 69  In Rom 10:5–17 (the explanation [or probatio] of the propositio in 10:4 [Comment Dieu est-il juste?, 123]), Paul contrasts the two economies, that of the law and that of faith (or of Christ). Paul’s point in these verses is to show that the two economies are incompatible, the former based on “doing” (so Rom 10:5), the latter on a “believing” that involves no human pursuit, but the accepting of a divine visitation and gift (10:6–8). Paul 65 



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In presenting Abraham as one who was justified as a “sinner” and who was, moreover, made a father beyond all possibility, Paul insists that the “work” was entirely God’s own. Moreover, the justification of ungodly Abraham by faith, apart from the works of the law, was paradigmatic of the justification of all sinful humanity apart from any good works of their own (100). The gratuity of justification is underlined by the gezerah shewa introduced in Romans 4:3–8:70 just as the forgiveness by which, according to Psalm 32:1–2, David’s sin was not “counted” against him was an act of divine grace, so must be the justification by which Abraham was “counted” righteous in Genesis 15:6 (91–94). 26. Mark Seifrid is among the staunchest critics of the “new perspective on Paul.” He laments that “a so-called ‘Lutheran’ reading of Paul has been dismissed” without an adequate grasp of what Luther meant by justification.71 “Covenantal nomism,” he observes, is misleading as a designation of early Judaism’s soteriology,72 and is in any case not exempt from Luther’s attack on salvation by works.73 Sanders minimizes the importance of forensic justification in Paul’s thought on inadequate grounds74 and fails to acknowledge that beliefs adopted by Paul subsequent to his conversion could have become of central importance to his theology.75 As for Dunn, here presents the path to life prescribed by the Mosaic law in the terms in which it was understood by Jews (10:5 is a quotation of Lev 18:5), believing that his earlier argument had already established that this path was not viable (Comment Dieu est-il juste?, 218–226). 70  I. e., since Gen 15:6 and Ps 32:1–2 have in common the occurrence of the Greek verb λογίζομαι , the two passages are allowed to illuminate each other. 71  Seifrid, “Blind Alleys,” 74. 72  Seifrid, “Righteousness Language,” 434–440; also his Justification by Faith, 57, 59; his “Blind Alleys,” 75–76; and his Christ, our Righteousness, 15–16. Page references to Seifrid’s work in the body of the text are taken from Christ, our Righteousness. 73 On the contrary, Sanders’s “covenantal nomism” (“God gives his grace to the one who by effort and intent is faithful to the covenant “) is itself “quite similar” to the medieval theology to which Luther reacted (“divine saving action is formally primary – bringing one into a state of grace and subsequently sustaining one there – but materially dependent on human response and ‘maintenance of covenant status’”) (“Blind Alleys,” 92). After his conversion, however, Paul “no longer viewed God as cooperating with human effort within the framework of the covenant with Israel. Now for Paul, God’s act in Christ effected salvation in itself” (Justification by Faith, 255; cf. Christ, our Righteousness, 17). 74 Seifrid, Justification by Faith, 51–52. Much of the argument of Seifrid’s Justification by Faith is devoted to establishing the centrality of forensic justification to Paul’s thinking (the claim is distinguished from the notion that justification represented “the logical starting point of all Paul’s reflections” [270]): noting that it came to be invoked in contexts other than those involving Jew-Gentile relations, Seifrid concludes that “Paul consistently reflected upon and applied to various concrete situations his belief that deliverance from impending divine wrath was supplied on the basis of God’s act in Christ alone” (255). 75 Seifrid, Justification by Faith, 54.

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when he claims that Paul opposed an exclusivistic national righteousness that insisted on the observance of circumcision, food and Sabbath laws, he does not duly acknowledge the religious and ethical values attached by Jews to these “markers,” or Jewish receptiveness toward non-Jews who adopted these practices to signal their rejection of idolatry and worship of the one true God, or the subordination (particularly apparent in Jewish texts that place some Jews as “outside the boundaries”) of the idea of “nation” to the larger one of “true religion and piety.”76 If the nationalism of some Jews had become “proud and prejudiced,” there was no need for the cross of Christ to demonstrate the error of their ways: such attitudes are abundantly condemned in the Hebrew scriptures themselves (19–21). In fact, Paul never attacks Jewish observance of the law. In Romans 4, he appears to distinguish circumcision, the primary mark of Jewish identity, from “works (of the law)”; and the contrast Paul draws between “works” (or “working”) and “concepts such as impiety, transgression, and forgiveness” indicates that he is here concerned with the ethical aspect of the “works of the law” and is “exploring the moral dimension of covenant fidelity.”77 In Seifrid’s own reading of Paul, Adam’s transgression was the first of two acts that “determine the entire course of human history”: the consequent subjection of all humanity to sin and death represents the condition “under which all sinned” (70, referring to Rom 5:12). To fallen human beings, the divine law was given. The law, precisely as law, demands deeds of obedience of those who would obtain life while condemning the transgressions of the disobedient (105). Inevitably, fallen human beings prove unable to meet its demands: apparent compliance is merely external, neither altering the idolatrous human heart nor expressing true love for God or neighbor (102–104, 148–149). Jews (including the pre-Christian Paul) knew well that they fell short of full compliance with the law, yet thought the law’s requirements adequately met when their acts of piety were supplemented by attention to the law’s provisions for atonement (102–103). Paul viewed human disobedience more radically: human beings are in outright rebellion against God (125). All are “idolaters” and “liars” (57–58) who fail to give God his due; hence, God has a “contention” against us. The law cannot cure our fallenness. Instead, it effects our transgression, reveals our bondage to sin, pronounces our sentence of death, demonstrates the justice of God in his contention against us – and so sets the stage for the incarnation (108–109). It is an indispensable stage. The law’s sentence of death is by no means to be escaped, since God’s Spirit gives life only to that which has been killed, 76 

77 

Cf. Seifrid, “Blind Alleys,” 77–80. Seifrid, “Blind Alleys,” 82–84.



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and righteousness is granted only “where the judgment of condemnation has been rendered” (112). If Adam’s sin was the first of two determinative acts in human history, the obedience of Christ was the second. Not that his decisive importance lies in the model of faithfulness that he left; rather, in the death to which his faithfulness brought him, he atoned for our sins. The law’s condemnation of humanity’s sinfulness was not set aside, but carried out on the cross; and it entailed, not the dismissal, but the triumph of God’s contention against us (66). The cross does not supplement human obedience with atonement for our partial failures, but marks the death of humanity in its radical disobedience (103). In Christ’s resurrection, a new creation was brought into being, a new life beyond the domain of sin and of the law that condemns sinners. The new creation, like the condemnation of the old, is a reality outside of us, in the person of Christ. In the death and resurrection of Christ, God is justified – he is shown to be in the right in his contention with his sinful creatures; so, too, is sinful humanity – believers are made new persons by sharing in the life of the new creation. The justification of the sinner and that of God are thus bound together inextricably (66). In the Hebrew scriptures, God acts to “justify” when, as King and Judge of the universe, he establishes justice and restores right order in his creation. He vindicates the righteous and his own rightful claim to be God, bringing retribution to bear on those who oppress his people and deny him (38–47).78 All these elements are present in the cross and resurrection of Christ: the vindication of God, the condemnation of his foes, the establishing of right order in the new creation. These – not the problems of nationalism or ethnicity – are the issues when justification is the theme in Paul’s writings (84–85). 27. The scholars at whom we have just looked believe that, for Paul, the sinfulness of human beings rules out any possibility of “righteousness through the law”; those to whom we now turn think (in addition) that, for Paul, Jewish pursuit of that path violates the principle that humans must trust God for all their needs. The thrust of Glenn N. Davies’s Faith and Obedience in Romans: A Study in Romans 1–4 is “to assert the continuity of God’s ways of dealing with mankind both before and after the coming of Christ. … The appropriate response of men and women is always faith and obedience” (18). In Romans 1:18–32, Paul describes the condemnation, not of all humankind, but of the wicked – Jews as well as Greeks – in contrast with the righteous who, according to 1:17, live by faith (17). Chapter 2 goes on to portray, not only God’s impartial condemnation of all who are wicked, but also his 78 

Cf. Seifrid, “Righteousness Language,” 415–442.

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impartial blessing of the righteous: Old Testament believers are primarily intended in 2:6–11, but righteous Gentiles (such as the repentant Ninevites, Job, Melchizedek, Rahab, Ruth, and Naaman), accepted because of their faith, are included as well (55–56). Even the judgment of Romans 3:10–18 is not universal, but rather an assertion of “the presence of evildoers among both Jews and Gentiles and their bondage to sin” (95). Excluded from their number are the righteous, Jews and Gentiles alike, whom God saved throughout the Old Testament era. God’s righteousness in doing so, however, was first established through the faithfulness Christ showed in his death on the cross: “although God’s forgiveness had been operative in Old Testament times (cf. Rom 4:7), the definitive expiation and propitiation with respect to that sin had not been effected” (109, on Rom 3:21–26). For even the “righteous” committed sins that needed forgiveness. When Paul excludes the “works of law” as a basis for justification, “the reason for their exclusion is that they do not deal with sin” (118). The works excluded in Romans 3:20a can hardly be confined to “emblems of national righteousness,” since it is scarcely these demands of the law alone that bring knowledge of sin (3:20b) (118). Indeed, since Paul, in Romans 2, has in effect said that righteous Gentiles do the “works of the law,” the latter can hardly refer to the “badges of [Jewish] ‘national righteousness’” (120). Similarly, in Romans 4, Paul argues from Scripture that it is not human works that result in the “non-reckoning of sins, but the sovereign act of God who forgives them. Clearly again the works that God has in mind are good works, done in obedience to God. Yet they play no part in God’s acquittal of the sinner” (122). In Romans 9:11, too, Paul asserts “that it is God’s activity and not man’s which forms the basis of salvation” (123). And though in none of the texts cited so far does Paul suggest that “works” are excluded because they are wrongly deemed by Jews to be meritorious, such an intimation seems clear in 9:32: “it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Israel considered her works, done in obedience to God, would be satisfactory to gain the acceptance of God at the last day” (124). Romans 11:6 points in the same direction (126). Thus, whereas Sanders appears to have successfully refuted the view that “Rabbinic religion was a religion of legalistic works-righteousness,” he has “not really avoided the conclusion that works do play [among Paul’s Jewish contemporaries] an integral (as opposed to evidential) role in one’s salvation” (146). 28. Our final Finnish contribution79 comes from Lauri Thurén, the title of whose monograph (Derhetorizing Paul: A Dynamic Perspective on Pauline Theology and the Law) conveys to those who can pronounce it the book’s 79 

Cf. the summaries of Kuula, Räisänen, Eskola, and Laato above.



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pivotal point. Too often, Paul’s writings have been read in a “static” way, as though Paul were merely informing his readers of his religious ideas, and as though what he writes on a matter reproduces exactly what he thinks (23). This approach has let to errors on the part both of those who think to derive from Paul’s letters direct statements of timeless, universal truth and of those who, finding Paul’s argumentation at the surface level problematic, conclude too readily that he was an inconsistent thinker (56). Paul intended to affect his readers by what he wrote, to induce a desired response, to influence their thoughts and actions (24); this intention gives his letters a “dynamic” character that must dictate our reading of them. On the other hand, Paul’s interest in theology is not to be underestimated, and the search, beneath the rhetoric, for the theology of his letters is by no means inappropriate. “Paul really seems to have had a special interest in theological questions, and a tendency … to approach even practical questions from a theological point of view” (17–18; cf. 138). It is telling that his letters have always provoked theological inquiry in a way that the letters of Peter and James have not (18). When the soteriology of Judaism is derived from a “static” reading of Paul’s letters, the results differ from what we know of the reality. But Paul was not writing an “objective” description of the faith of his opponents. What we have is rather a “pedagogically overstated” presentation of an alternative position to his own, not without some perceived relation to the actual thinking of his opponents (otherwise Paul’s rhetorical purposes would not have been served), but theoretic to the extent that it includes what, to Paul’s mind, were the “true nature” and possible consequences rather than the simple substance of his antagonists’ views. We are left with a “legalistic” picture only if we are guilty of a “static” reading of Paul’s very “dynamic” texts (68–69, 145–146, 165–166, 177). On the other hand, Thurén believes, recent Pauline scholarship has correctly moved beyond Sanders’s “one-sided amendment” of earlier studies on rabbinic theology to a more balanced view. “Both divine grace and human obedience could be emphasized” in ancient Judaism, and both are repeatedly seen to have a role in salvation. We seldom find in Jewish texts (or, for that matter, in many early Christian texts) Paul’s “radical view of man’s universal guilt and explicit disregard of the human contribution to salvation” (147–148, 177–178). Paul made “grace” and “works” exclusive alternatives – in the process giving “grace” a restricted meaning not normally borne by the term (170) – in a way that Judaism did not. Judaism did not, like Paul, emphasize “grace” or “faith alone” while “totally rejecting the role of good works for salvation” – and to that extent at least it provided a basis for Paul’s rhetorical differentiation between a “righteousness of the law” and that “of faith” (142, 146, 178).

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Why, in the end, did Paul reject the law? Part of the answer may lie in the perception that the law constituted a barrier between Jews and Gentiles that “must be eliminated before true universal monotheism is possible” (163). The prophets themselves had proclaimed the “religious differentiation between Jews and Gentiles as temporal” (163). Perhaps Paul simply took the further step of proclaiming that the source of the differentiation, the Torah, was temporary, too. But the question then arises why universal monotheism could not have been reached by proclaiming the universal validity of the law apart from the boundaries it imposed upon Gentiles (166). Something deeper must be at stake – and an old, now unpopular, idea may provide a glimpse of the answer. Regardless of what actually happened in first-century Judaism, those who possess a law are, in principle, susceptible to the temptation to boast, not simply of its possession, but also of their compliance with it (166). It is common for scholars now to confine the boasting excluded by Romans 3:27 to the possession of the law; but the thesis there stated is expanded on and illustrated in chapter 4, where it is allowed that, if one is justified by works, then one has reason to boast, though boasting is ruled out where there is dependence on grace. And Romans 2:23 suggests that boasting in one’s possession of the law is appropriate only if one complies with its commands. The boasting ruled out by the message of faith in 3:27 is thus likely both that of possession of the law and that of one’s obedience to it (169–171). Clearly, Paul thinks that, where the “works of the law” play a role in salvation, boasting of one’s righteousness is at least a theoretic possibility (Phil 3:4–6 suggests that it was not only theoretic [168–169]). Yet Paul’s opposition to boasting that deprives God of his glory is expressed in different contexts and appears to be basic to his thinking (173). What, most profoundly, was wrong with the law for Paul may well have been that it provoked pride and trust in something other than God alone (183). 29. For Colin G. Kruse,80 though the soteriology of first-century Judaism may, in principle, have been based on God’s election and grace, and though, in principle, observance of the law was to mark the Jew’s grateful response to God’s goodness, in practice “covenantal nomism” at times “degenerated into the legalism which the apostle attacked. … In Paul’s view, many Jews of his day … had fallen into the trap of believing that salvation could be attained by carrying out what the law required” (241; cf. 225, 296). In Galatians, Paul’s opposition was initially sparked by an insistence that the distinctively Jewish “works of the law” be performed even by Gentile believers. His argument developed, however, into a “thoroughgoing” critique 80 Kruse,

Paul, the Law, and Justification.



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of the law (68): the law “operates on the principle of performance … and not on the principle of faith” (107, referring to Gal 3:12; cf. 84), whereas the “means by which people are justified in God’s sight” has always been that of faith (110). The intended function of the law was merely to “restrain moral decline in Israel until the coming of [the family of] Christ to whom the promise applied” (92–93). When, in Romans, Paul rejected the “works of the law” as a path to justification, the moral demands of the law were primarily in view: Paul’s point was that “no-one would be justified on account of his or her moral achievements” (187; cf. 242). In Philippians 3 and elsewhere, “Paul contrasts righteousness based upon human status and achievement (mostly the latter) with that which comes from the overflowing goodness of God” (270). When we reach Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles, we find emphasized “again and again … that believers are saved, not by their own moral achievements, or by works or deeds of righteousness of their own, but only by the grace of God (and through faith)” (270). While many of Paul’s claims about justification combat the views of others, it is apparent from “many statements in which Paul celebrates the personal blessings of justification” that his concern with the doctrine was by no means limited to its controversial aspects (283). As for believers, they are free from the law as a “regulatory norm,” though, as Scripture, the law continues to be a source of instruction for them (249, 276). “Paul found in the law paradigms for Christian behaviour (and paradigms of God’s response) on which he could draw in his ethical exhortations without restating the demands of the law as a regulatory norm for believers” (136; cf. 119, 145). 30. According to Richard H. Bell,81 “Paul’s critique of works of law in Rom. 1.18–3.20” centers on “human inability to keep the law” (271). The phrase “works of law” cannot be isolated from the argument of Romans 2, with its language of “practising the law,” “observing the ordinances of the law,” “keeping the law,” and “doers of the law,” and where not keeping the law is shown in sins of theft, adultery, and temple robbery (229). The emphasis on judgment according to works in this section of Romans underlines the need for a revelation of God’s righteousness if sinners are to be saved (255). Still, Bell finds in the passage hints that Paul detects and rejects “legalism” in Judaism as well: something of self-righteousness is evident in 2:17–24, and 3:27–4:2 is explicit in rejecting boasting based on the doing of the law (184–187, 263–265). And when Paul rules out justification by “works of law” in 3:20, it seems that Paul believes this was God’s intention from the beginning (271). “Paul’s view that no one can be justified by works has a certain parallel with the view that no one can know God through the created order. 81 Bell,

No One Seeks for God.

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So in Rom. 1.19–21a Paul puts forward the view of people knowing God through creation; then in 1.21b–32 he says this is an impossible way, for any such knowledge has been lost. … Likewise, in Rom. 2.1–29 he puts forward the view that one can be justified by works; then in 3.9–20 he makes it clear that this way is impossible because all are under the power of sin” (272). The suggestions that humans can know God through the created order and that they can be justified by works are both rejected in the end, not only because sin renders them moot, but also because they leave room for a theology of glory apart from the cross of Christ (272). 31. Vincent M. Smiles82 agrees with the “new perspective” that Paul was not attacking Jewish “legalism,” if the latter term means “a fastidious externalism that, forgetful of election and covenant, insisted on ‘works-righteousness’ as the only way humans could earn salvation” (21). On the other hand, “Judaism can properly be called ‘legalistic’ … in that the demands of the covenant, enshrined in the ‘law,’ make ‘life’ dependent on obedience and threaten the ‘curse’ for disobedience (e. g., Deut 27–29; Lev 18:5). … It makes nonsense of Paul, not to mention Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, to deny that the law requires obedience and makes such obedience, within the context of the covenant, a prerequisite for salvation” (19). In Judaism, then, “the law has a necessary soteriological function” (18 n. 46). But any such role for the law is rejected by Paul. Where the law’s requirement of obedience (within the context of the covenant, to be sure) is seen as determinative of the divine-human relationship, there the sovereignty of divine grace is compromised (226). This is the thrust of Paul’s rejection of the notion that “justification” is “by the works of the law.” The latter phrase is a favorite of Paul’s, though extremely rare outside his writings; determinative of its meaning is the word “works,” which can, indeed, be used by itself as an abbreviation of the whole: if justification is “by the works of the law,” then “the divine-human relationship” is defined “in terms of performance of the law’s demands” (119, 123). But this is to distort the true nature of that relationship: clearly, already in the story of Abraham, and demonstrably in the gospel of God’s initiative, in Christ, for the salvation of sinners, grace is foundational (24). To suggest, as did certain Jewish Christians, that the law was not by itself sufficient for salvation but that faith in Messiah is also necessary (118) is to imply that the death of Christ for our sins was insufficient for the purpose (70, 102). 32. Brad Eastman83 suggests that recent estimates, influenced by the work of Sanders, of the role of grace in Paul’s thinking about the law and jus82 Smiles,

Gospel and the Law. Significance of Grace.

83 Eastman,



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tification have suffered from a failure to examine the concept in other (and non-polemical) contexts. A survey of the acknowledged Pauline epistles leads him to conclude that grace is of “fundamental importance” to “Paul’s religious vision” (198). Everywhere, we find expressions of the conviction that grace is needed both for entrance into the Christian community and throughout the lives of believers: “people ‘get in’ and ‘stay in’ the community only because God calls them and empowers them” (210; cf. 160). Eastman notes in particular “Paul’s almost instinctive tendency to qualify statements about human achievements and responsibility with statements that at least imply, if not explicitly refer to, dependence on God. The apostle cannot speak of human effort without immediately being led to refer, in some way, to dependence on divine resources” (198, referring to Phil 2:12– 13; texts cited elsewhere include 1 Cor 15:10; Gal 4:9). The theme, though by no means confined to discussions of the Jewish Torah or other polemical contexts, does “shape” Paul’s understanding of justification as well: the law, requiring human compliance with its demands, can have no part in the process – the gift – of salvation, from which human activity is excluded (210, 213–214). Sanders, Eastman believes, “errs in his underestimation of the significance of grace in Paul and in a failure to appreciate the full extent of Paul’s pessimism about ‘flesh’ and its abilities to please God” (216). In fact, Paul’s “justification” texts “readily fall into the larger pattern of dependence on God” (210). 33. Seyoon Kim84 energetically tackles the work of the most energetic proponent of the “new perspective,” James D. G. Dunn. To Dunn he attributes the positions that Paul received at Damascus “only God’s call to the gentile mission” (22); that Paul’s conversion did not entail a devaluation of the law as the means of justification (27, 46); that Paul’s doctrine of justification developed only gradually “in the wake of the Antiochian incident and the Galatian controversy” (22); and that that doctrine is to be understood narrowly as a defense of Paul’s gentile mission (3), its primary thrust lying in the “insight that God’s covenant grace is also for the Gentiles as Gentiles” and “does not require Gentiles to merge their ethnic identity into that of the Jewish people” (20, quoting Dunn). Against these claims, he advances his own thesis that the Damascus Christophany brought Paul both a revelation of the gospel and an apostolic commission to the Gentiles (6): Damascus “convinced Paul … of the truth of the Christian kerygma that Christ vicariously bore the curse of the law for our sins. … So he realized that now salvation depends on appropriating the divine redemption that had been wrought in Christ … rather than on observing the law” (42). As a 84 Kim,

Paul and the New Perspective.

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result, “Paul began to develop his distinctive soteriological formulation of the gospel in terms of justification through faith in Christ without works of the law. This new soteriology provided a theological basis for his gentile mission to which he was also called at the Damascus Christophany” (22). That the “righteousness of the law” pursued by Pharisaic Judaism in the first century in fact contained “en element of works-righteousness” is apparent from the personal achievements Paul lists to his credit in Philippians 3, and from his claim that, on their basis, he could have “greater ‘confidence in the flesh’ than his Jewish opponents” (76): were such “righteousness” conceived without thought of merit, and had it amounted merely to a matter of good intentions to observe the law with atonement provided for all shortcomings, then claims to excel would have been pointless (149). This conclusion, based on the first-hand evidence that Paul provides for Pharisaic Judaism, is confirmed by a number of recent studies of Jewish sources (83, 143–152). On the other hand, only when Paul’s opposition to “works of the law” is seen as rooted in his conviction that the latter represent human, and therefore inadequate, attempts to earn salvation is the contrast he draws between such works and “faith” or “grace” comprehensible (60). As for justification, it has “a forensic dimension, so that it often refers to acquittal or deliverance from God’s wrath at the last judgment … and to its anticipation in the present” (66). When the forensic dimension of justification is kept in view, the sins or trespasses “from which justification or acquittal is supposed to be made cannot be limited to the transgression of the commandments that specially mark Israel off as the covenant people of God.” And, in fact, transgressions of the “religious and ethical commandments of the law” are often explicitly the issue (67). “To that extent, the traditional interpretation of the doctrine of justification by grace and through faith without works of the law in terms of acquittal of sinners by God’s grace apart from their own good works of observing all the religious and ethical commandments of the law is legitimate” (83).

Concluding Observations No assessment of the studies here summarized can be attempted without a careful reexamination of the Pauline texts from which they claim support – and that task belongs to others.85 Nonetheless, a few concluding observations may be in order.

85  Cf. the essays in Carson, O’Brien, and Seifrid, editors, Justification and Variegated Nomism, Vol. 2.



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That there is little consensus on the “new perspective” is apparent enough. But perhaps all would agree that Sanders has rightly reminded us of the need to portray the Judaism of Paul’s day in its own terms, and from sources other than Paul’s writings (though the latter, as some scholars point out, provide evidence as well). And no reader of Sanders can fail to see that divine grace played a fundamental role in Jewish “soteriology.” Since, however, the latter can also be said of the soteriology of Pelagius and the sixteenth-century church, the question remains whether the insistence on an exclusive reliance on divine grace that Augustine and Luther derived from Paul’s writings is in fact a theme of the apostle – and whether it was a point on which he differed from his opponents. Having combed much of the literature sparked by the “new perspective,” I find myself in closest (though by no means complete) agreement with Westerholm’s Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith.86 As argued there, Paul finds the basic principle of the “righteousness of the law” in Scripture itself, so that what he rejects can scarcely be confined to perceived misunderstandings (ethnocentric, legalistic, or otherwise) among his contemporaries. The law as law, is meant to be observed: only so can the life and blessings that it promises be enjoyed. But (the post-Damascus) Paul believes that human beings, at enmity with God and in slavery to sin, have neither the ability nor the inclination to submit to God’s law. (Laato, among others, has reminded us that the pessimism of Paul’s “anthropology” is not typically Jewish, and that it is inevitably accompanied by a different soteriology.) It follows (as those who stress the “apocalyptic” aspects of Paul’s thought are wont to remind us) that, for Paul, a new divine act of creation is needed before people can be “put right” with God. Hence, integral to Paul’s Christian thinking – and, indeed, to his “doctrine of justification” – are his convictions that all 86  [When the manuscript for this article was first submitted, it was expected that the volume in which it would appear (Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 2) would be published prior to the publication of my Perspectives Old and New on Paul, an updated and expanded version of Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith. Since my views had developed somewhat since the publication of the latter work (in 1988), I referred in this article somewhat whimsically to disagreements with myself, as above. In fact, however, delays in the publication of Justification and Variegated Nomism meant that my Perspectives appeared first. It occurred, then, to an editor of Justification and Variegated Nomism that, in place of my reference to Israel’s Law, one to Perspectives would be in order. The result of the editorial “improvement” was that I now appeared to disagree in this article with the monograph I had just published. I here restore the original text. [In 2004, as in 1988, I believed that Paul understood believers to be free from obligation to the Mosaic law in all its parts. I still believe that to be the case. After 1988, however, I came to realize that Paul identified the “good” that all human beings (including believers) are to do with the moral requirements of Mosaic law. In effect, then, Paul did expect believers to observe the moral requirements of Mosaic law, though he expressed the matter differently. That more nuanced understanding is reflected in a number of chapters in this volume.]

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human endeavors are salvifically unhelpful and that justification must be received (by faith) as a gift of God’s grace. (As we have seen, even several scholars who believe Paul’s thinking on justification began in opposition to Jewish “nationalistic” righteousness acknowledge that it developed in this direction.) That Luther, to this extent at least, gets Paul “right” is part of what I intended when I once suggested, somewhat epigrammatically, that Pauline scholars can learn from the Reformer.87 But there is more to be said. Admittedly, Luther is prone to seeing his own circumstances reflected in biblical texts (if this is a fault); and (herein lies a very great fault), when he writes polemically, his terms and tone are often monumentally lamentable. Still, one has only to read a few pages of his writings (most any will do) to realize that, in crucial respects, he inhabits the same world, and breathes the same air, as the apostle. Both are driven by a massive, unremitting sense of answerability to their Maker. For both, the message of God’s grace in Christ is a source of palpable liberty and joy, and of prodigious παρρησία. For both, the faith in God awakened by the message of the cross is a living, busy, active, mighty thing; for both, works without faith are dead. Neither makes the slightest gesture toward cloaking his horror and indignation at any perceived tampering with the divine kerygma or infringement of divine prerogatives. Such kindredness of spirit gives Luther an inestimable advantage over many readers of Paul in capturing the essence of the apostle’s writings.88 On numerous points of detail, Luther may be the last to illumine. For those, however, who would see forest as well as trees, I am still inclined to propose a trip to the dustbins of recent Pauline scholarship – to retrieve and try out, on a reading of the epistles, the discarded spectacles of the Reformer. Bibliography Aletti, Jean-Noël. Comment Dieu est-il juste? Clefs pour interprêter l’épître aux Romains. Paris: Seuil, 1991. – “Comment Paul voit la justice de Dieu en Rm. Enjeux d’une absence de définition.” Biblica 73 (1992): 359–375. – Israël et la Loi dans la lettre aux Romains. Paris: Cerf, 1998.

87 Cf.

Israel’s Law, 173. colleague John Robertson reminds me of the preface to the second edition of Barth’s Romans, where Barth speaks of the “genuine understanding” and “intuitive certainty” of Luther’s exegesis, and compares it favorably with commentators who do not advance beyond a “prolegomenon to the understanding of the Epistle” (Barth, Romans, 7). 88 My



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– “La présence d’un modèle rhétorique en Romains. Son rôle et son importance.” Biblica 71 (1990): 1–24. – “Rm 1,18–3,20. Incohérence ou cohérence de l’argumentation paulienne?” Biblica 69 (1988): 47–62. – “Romains 2. Sa cohérence et sa fonction.” Biblica 77 (1996): 153–177. – “Romans.” In The International Bible Commentary, edited by William R. Farmer. Collegeville: Liturgical, 1998, 1553–1600. Barclay, John M. G. Obeying the Truth: Paul’s Ethics in Galatians. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988. Barth, Karl. The Epistle to the Romans. London: Oxford University Press, 1933. Bell, Richard H. No One Seeks for God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 1:18–3:20. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998. Boyarin, Daniel. A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Campbell, William S. Paul’s Gospel in an Intercultural Context: Jew and Gentile in the Letter to the Romans. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1991. Carson, D. A., Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid, editors. Justification and Variegated Nomism, Vol. 2: The Paradoxes of Paul. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004. Das, A. Andrew. Paul, the Law, and the Covenant. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2001. Davies, Glenn N. Faith and Obedience in Romans: A Study in Romans 1–4. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1990. Donaldson, Terence L. Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional World. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997. Dunn, James D. G. The Epistle to the Galatians. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1993. – Jesus, Paul, and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1990. – “The Justice of God: A Renewed Perspective on Justification by Faith.” Journal of Theological Studies 43 (1992): 1–22. – The Partings of the Ways Between Christianity and Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991. – The Theology of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. – The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998. Eastman, Brad. The Significance of Grace in the Letters of Paul. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Elliott, Neil. The Rhetoric of Romans: Argumentative Constraint and Strategy and Paul’s Dialogue with Judaism. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1990. Eskola, Timo. “Avodat Israel and the ‘Works of the Law’ in Paul.” In From the Ancient Sites of Israel: Essays on Archaeology, History and Theology in Memory of Aapeli Saarisalo (1896–1986), edited by T. Eskola and E. Junkkaala. Helsinki: Theological Institute of Finland, 1998, 175–197. – Theology and Predestination in Pauline Soteriology. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998. Garlington, Don. Faith, Obedience, and Perseverance: Aspects of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994. – ‘The Obedience of Faith’: A Pauline Phrase in Historical Context. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991. Gaston, Lloyd. Paul and the Torah. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987.

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Kim, Seyoon. Paul and the New Perspective: Second Thoughts on the Origin of Paul’s Gospel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. Kruse, Colin G. Paul, the Law, and Justification. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997. Kuula, Kari. The Law, the Covenant and God’s Plan: Paul’s Polemical Treatment of the Law in Galatians. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999. Laato, Timo. Paul and Judaism: An Anthropological Approach. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995. Liebers, Reinhold. Das Gesetz als Evangelium: Untersuchungen zur Gesestzeskritik des Paulus. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1989. Longenecker, Bruce. Eschatology and the Covenant: A Comparison of 4 Ezra and Romans 1–11. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1991. – The Triumph of Abraham’s God: The Transformation of Identity in Galatians. Nashville: Abingdon, 1998. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. “Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre in der gegenwärtigen exegetischen Diskussion.” In Worum geht es in der Rechtfertigungslehre? Das biblische Fundament der “Gemeinsamen Erklärung” von katholischer Kirche und Lutherischem Weltbund, edited by Thomas Söding. Freiburg: Herder, 1999, 106–130. Räisänen, Heikki. “Legalism and Salvation by the Law.” In Die paulinische Literatur und Theologie, edited by S. Pedersen. Aarhus: Forlaget Aros, 1980, 63–83. – Paul and the Law. Second edition. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987. Sanders, E. P. Paul. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. – Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977. – Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983. Schreiner, Thomas R. The Law and Its Fulfilment: A Pauline Theology of Law. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993. – “‘Works of Law’ in Paul.” Novum Testamentum 33 (1991): 217–244. Smiles, Vincent M. The Gospel and the Law in Galatia: Paul’s Response to JewishChristian Separatism and the Threat of Galatian Apostasy. Collegeville: Liturgical, 1998. Seifrid, Mark A. “Blind Alleys in the Controversy over the Paul of History.” Tyndale Bulletin 45 (1994): 73–95. – Christ, Our Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Justification. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2000. – Justification by Faith: The Origin and Development of a Central Pauline Theme. Leiden: Brill, 1992. – “Righteousness Language in the Hebrew Scriptures and Early Judaism.” In Justification and Variegated Nomism, Vol. 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism, edited by D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001, 415–442. Stowers, Stanley K. A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Stuhlmacher, Peter. Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, Vol. 1: Grundlegung: Von Jesus zu Paulus. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992. – Reconciliation, Law, and Righteousness: Essays in Biblical Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986. – Revisiting Paul’s Doctrine of Justification: A Challenge to the New Perspective. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2001. Thielman, Frank. Paul and the Law: A Contextual Approach. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1994.



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Thurén, Lauri. Derhetorizing Paul: A Dynamic Perspective on Pauline Theology and the Law. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000. Watson, Francis. Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Westerholm, Stephen. Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988. – Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Winninge, Mikael. Sinners and the Righteous: A Comparative Study of the Psalms of Solomon and Paul’s Letters. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1995. Wright, N. T. The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991. – The New Testament and the People of God. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992. – “The Paul of History and the Apostle of Faith.” Tyndale Bulletin 29 (1978): 61–88. – “Romans and the Theology of Paul.” In Pauline Theology, Vol. 3: Romans, edited by David M. Hay and E. Elizabeth Johnson. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995, 30–67. – What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. Yinger, Kent L. Paul, Judaism, and Judgment According to Deeds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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Finnish Contribution to the Debate on Paul and the Law Let it be stated clearly at the outset: my participation in this project1 is a matter of grace, not merit. My own links to Finland are too weak 2 to allow anything I write to be itself considered a Finnish contribution. I have, however, had occasion elsewhere3 to note the important part played by a number of Finnish scholars in the debate over the “new perspective on Paul.” Those remarks led to an invitation to comment here on these contributions. I am happy to do so, convinced that Finnish scholarship in this area merits wider attention. Any controversy related to Paul and the law is bound to attract scholarly attention in a land with Lutheran roots as strong as those in Finland. The particular debate under discussion here was launched by E. P. Sanders, whose Paul and Palestinian Judaism called for a new view of Judaism as well as a rethinking of what Paul says about the law. Sanders opposed the notion that, according to Judaism, God awarded salvation to individuals who merited it by their good works. Those who understood Judaism in this way then read Paul as attacking the legalistic soteriology, self-righteousess, and boasting of Jews. Paul’s doctrine of justification was taken to mean that human beings cannot be approved (“justified”) by God on the basis of deeds they have done, but only by divine grace, appropriated by faith. Sanders countered such views by insisting that Judaism, no less than Pauline Christianity, was based on grace: Jews attributed their standing before God to God’s gracious election of Israel as his covenant people. To be sure, Jews were expected to respond (as Paul expected his converts to respond) to God’s grace by obeying God’s commands. But deeds of obedience merely served (for Judaism and Paul alike) to maintain one’s status as a member of God’s people. Sanders labeled this understanding of Judaism “covenantal nomism.” If the Judaism of Paul’s day was not the legalistic religion that many Pauline scholars had portrayed it as being, then the reason for which Paul 1  The Nordic Paul: Finnish Approaches to Pauline Theology (eds. Aejmelaeus and Mustakallio). 2  Not nonexistent, however. My grandmother emigrated to the United States from Ostrobothnia in Finland in 1911. 3 Westerholm, Perspectives, 226–227; “New Perspective” [chapter 11 in this volume].

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rejected it needed reconsideration as well: a Paul who faulted Judaism for its legalism would have missed the target with his critique. Sanders himself believes that Paul’s (“Lutheran”) interpreters introduced the distortion by reading Luther’s attacks on Catholic legalism back into Paul’s rejection of Judaism. For Sanders, Paul found Judaism wrong simply because it sought salvation apart from Christ. After all, if salvation is through Christ, then any other proposed path, including Judaism, must be wrong. In what follows, I will summarize the views of five Finnish contributors to the debate, then offer some concluding observations based on my own reading of Paul.

Heikki Räisänen Undoubtedly, the most influential Finnish contribution to the debate provoked by Sanders’s work is that of Heikki Räisänen. Sanders found evidence for his proposal that Paul’s thought moved “from solution to plight” in the inconsistencies he perceived in Paul’s statements about the human dilemma: it is apparent, Sanders maintained, that Paul did not begin with a clear understanding of what was wrong with humanity, then see Christ as the solution to the problem; rather, beginning with the conviction that Christ is the solution, he attempted in various, and mutually incompatible, ways to depict a plight that suited the solution. Räisänen goes still further: contradictions and tensions mark all of Paul’s thinking about the law.4 To that argument we must turn shortly, but first I would like to draw attention to three points on related matters where Räisänen has shed significant light. 1. The ambiguity of the term “legalism” has dogged the debate from the start. A number of scholars (myself included) have found helpful Räisänen’s proposed distinction between “hard” and “soft” legalism: for soft legalists, “salvation consists of the observance of precepts”;5 hard legalists share this conviction but add to it the vices of smugness, boasting, and self-righteousness. Räisänen’s point – and it is well taken – is that the belief that one must observe God’s commands if one is to gain salvation need not lead to the latter vices. 2. Rudolf Bultmann does not figure largely in recent discussions of Paul and the law; but he once did, and the Bultmannian dictum was well represented that “according to Paul the person who fulfils the law needs grace as much 4  The thrust of Räisänen’s argument is thus similar to that found in his article “Loyalties.” 5  Räisänen, “Legalism,” 64.



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as the one who trespasses against it – indeed it is he most of all who needs it! For in seeking to establish his own righteousness, he is acting fundamentally against God.”6 Support for this position was found in the belief that, when Paul cited the commandment “You shall not covet [or “desire”]” from the Decalogue (Rom 7:7), he understood it to prohibit Jewish zeal (“desire”) for fulfilling the law as well as acts of covetousness in the usual sense. Without retracing his argumentation here, I will simply say that Räisänen’s article on Paul’s terminology for “desire”7 decisively refutes what was not seen then (though it appears so now) as a bizarre interpretation. 3. Those who regard Judaism as “legalistic” are wont to see in Judaism a distortion of what the Mosaic law is all about: Jews have perverted a law that fundamentally requires faith into one that demands “works.” Starting in the 1950s, certain scholars found in Paul’s expressions “law of faith” (Rom 3:27) and “law of the spirit of life” (Rom 8:2) support for this understanding. Though hitherto “law” in these expressions had always been taken to mean something like “principle,” these interpreters saw Paul referring specifically to the Mosaic law and defining its essence as a “law [which, rightly understood, is a law] of faith,” or “a law [which, rightly understood, is a law] of the spirit of life.” In two important articles,8 Räisänen demonstrated (successfully, I believe) both that Greek usage of νόμος allows for the translation “principle” in these verses, and that Paul’s progression of thought requires it. Numerous other points of detail could be mentioned; but undoubtedly what Räisänen is best known for is the position that inconsistencies should be accepted as constant features of Paul’s thinking. Given the focus of this essay, I will here summarize briefly Räisänen’s earlier work on the law rather than his treatment (in this volume, and elsewhere) of Romans 9–11.9 In Paul and the Law, Räisänen suggests that Paul’s thinking on the law proves problematic in five different areas. 1. What Paul means by the law seems to shift from text to text. At times, he speaks of the Mosaic law as given solely to Jews (e. g., 1 Cor 9:20–21), at other times, as though Gentiles, too, are subject to its demands (e. g., Gal 3:13–14; 4:5–6; Rom 7:4–6). At times, he effectively reduces the law to its moral requirements (e. g., Rom 2:14, 26–27; 8:4), though without noting the reduction. 6 

Bultmann, “End,” 46. Räisänen, “Use,” 95–111. 8  Räisänen, “Law,” 48–68; and “Word-Play,” 69–94. 9  Professor Räisänen and I have exchanged views on Romans 9–11 in Dunn (ed.), Paul and the Mosaic Law, 215–249. 7 

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2. At times, Paul speaks of the law as though its period of validity has passed (e. g., 2 Corinthians 3; Galatians 3) and believers are not subject to its demands; elsewhere, he cites demands of Torah as still binding (e. g., 1 Cor 9:9; 2 Cor 8:15) and sees the task of Christians as that of fulfilling the law (Gal 5:14; Rom 8:4; 13:8–10). 3. At times, Paul indicates that human beings are incapable of fulfilling the law (e. g., Gal 3:10); elsewhere, such fulfillment seems unproblematic (e. g., Rom 2:14–15, 26–27; Phil 3:6). 4. Paul generally indicates that God gave the law, but in Galatians 3:19 he at least toys with the idea that it came from angels. Nor is he consistent in his explanations of God’s purpose in giving the law: it was meant to give life to those who observe it (so, e. g., Rom 7:10), or it never had that purpose (Gal 3:21); it rendered sin culpable (Rom 5:13; cf. 4:15), or God punishes sin even where there is no law (Rom 2:12–16); it provokes sin (Rom 5:20; 7:5, 7–13), though Paul is not clear whether sin itself does (Rom 5:20; 7:13–14) or does not (7:7–11) exist apart from law. 5. Like Sanders, Räisänen believes that Judaism attributed salvation to divine grace. Unlike Sanders, Räisänen believes that Paul nonetheless portrays law observance as Judaism’s path to salvation. In fact (Sanders and Räisänen both maintain), the relationship between grace and works is the same in Judaism as in Pauline thought: salvation (i. e., one’s status as a member of God’s people) is by grace, but judgment will be based on deeds, and grievous sins will lead to condemnation. All of this suggests a Paul who was something less than the great theologian he is often made out to be. But Räisänen believes the root of the problem lies not with Paul’s intelligence quotient, but with a dilemma at the very heart of Christian theology: Christians want to justify doing away with a law that they nonetheless believe to be divinely instituted. That Paul struggled vainly to resolve an insoluble dilemma does not in itself reflect poorly on Paul. But it does call for a reevaluation of his thought.

Kari Kuula Three questions lie at the center of Kuula’s study of the law and the covenant in Paul’s writings:10 (1) Does Paul’s thinking on the law and the covenant remain within the framework of Jewish covenantal nomism, or does it represent a fundamental break with his ancestral religion? (2) How do Paul’s 10 Kuula,

The Law, the Covenant and God’s Plan.



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different statements on the law and the covenant relate to each other? Can we identify the starting-point of Paul’s thought, then show how other claims derive from these beginnings? (3) Are the various claims Paul makes about the law and the covenant compatible with each other, or (as Räisänen suggests) mutually contradictory? On the third question, Kuula’s work emphatically reaffirms Räisänen’s results in each area where the latter found Paul’s arguments about the law problematic. These have been listed above and need not be repeated here. On the second question, it is primarily the work of E. P. Sanders that Kuula reaffirms. Like Sanders, Kuula identifies participationist soteriology (i. e., the notion that one attains salvation through participation in Christ and in the Spirit) as the center of Paul’s thought. Other important startingpoints for Paul’s thinking are the convictions that God is the God of Israel, and that the Jewish scriptures are sacred and authoritative. Once these starting-points have been identified, Kuula believes that the problems posed by Pauline inconsistencies become at least explicable. Since salvation is based on participation in Christ, it follows that salvation cannot come from the Jewish law and covenant; that, with the coming of Christ, the latter have lost whatever validity they once had; and that Christians are not bound by (at least) the law’s ritual and cultic requirements. From these conclusions Paul never wavered. Still, when he attempted to formulate arguments to support these conclusions, tensions and contradictions inevitably emerged: inevitably, because (and here Kuula repeats Räisänen’s thesis) a profound dilemma lies at the heart of Paul’s theology. Faith in (the faithfulness of) the God of Israel simply cannot be combined with Paul’s christocentric soteriology. On the question of continuity, Kuula believes that Paul has decisively broken with Jewish covenantal nomism. Admittedly, Paul uses scriptural language to describe his soteriology and claims that the “law” (here meaning Scripture) foretells it. But neither covenantal nomism nor Paul’s christocentric soteriology can accommodate the other; and Paul, realizing this, insists that Jews no less than Gentiles need salvation in Christ. For Paul, then, Judaism and Christianity are separate religions. And he is left defending the indefensible position that God reveals his righteousness in the very gospel that represents his breaking of the covenant with Israel.

Timo Laato and Timo Eskola Long before E. P.Sanders set the agenda for much of Pauline scholarship with his Paul and Palestinian Judaism, the Jewish scholar Claude G. Montefiore articulated his thoughts on the relationship between the apostle

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and his ancestral faith.11 One difference he noted was that Paul’s thinking was consistently more pessimistic than that of the rabbis. The latter were certainly aware of human sin, but they also believed there was much human goodness in the world. While granting the need for divine help, they never “supposed that human efforts count for nothing,” or that human beings were incapable of coping with a sinful “flesh.” “Man could receive salvation, and get the better of sin, (for God was always helping and forgiving) even without so strange and wonderful a device [as the cross of Christ].”12 Paul, on the other hand, thought human beings (“in the flesh”) could do no good. Timo Laato13 believes that this fundamental distinction between Paul and his Jewish contemporaries has been obscured in Sanders’s work. Jewish texts (he notes) repeatedly affirm human freedom of will and the human capacity to keep God’s commandments. The propensity to sin that lies within each human being falls far short of a compulsion. Adam’s sin, far from determining the basic sinfulness of his descendants, was deemed merely a (bad) example that human beings may or may not choose to follow. From such views Paul’s theology of sin is separated by an unbridgeable gulf. Humanity’s problem, for Paul, is not simply the individual, concrete transgressions (plural) that human beings commit, but the (singular) sin that represents their total incapacity to do, or even choose, the good. For Paul, Adam’s disobedience allowed sin not only to enter the world but also to gain dominion over it. Indeed, interpreting the latter half of Romans 7 as a depiction of Christian existence, Laato concludes that even Christians, for Paul, are at best able to overcome the deeds of the flesh; as long as they live in “this body of death,” they never escape its desires. In short, “the anthropological presuppositions of the Jewish and the Pauline pattern of religion clearly differ from one another. The former is based on human free will, while the latter is founded on human depravity. Paul seems never to have given up [his] pessimistic anthropology.”14 This difference in anthropology, according to Laato, corresponds to a difference in soteriology. Jewish texts speak of the willingness of the exodus generation to accept the commandments revealed at Mount Sinai. Like that generation, proselytes to Judaism must freely submit to the laws of Torah. Even born Jews, though belonging to the covenant by birth, must later consciously take up the “yoke” of God’s rule. Thus, non-Jew and Jew alike must acquire or renew entrance into the covenant by an act of their own free will; their salvation requires their active cooperation. By way of contrast, Paul’s more pessimistic anthropology requires a soteriology in which 11 Montefiore,

Judaism and St. Paul. Judaism and St. Paul, 78. 13 Laato, Paul and Judaism. 14 Laato, Paul and Judaism, 146. 12 Montefiore,



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God alone is the agent of salvation. Indeed, Paul can speak of the event by which a person comes to faith as an act of divine creation (2 Cor 4:6; cf. 1 Cor 1:28), and faith itself is repeatedly portrayed as a divine gift (Phil 1:29; cf. Rom 10:17; 1 Cor 4:15).15 A somewhat similar line is taken in Timo Eskola’s Theodicy and Predestination in Pauline Soteriology. Eskola first questions Sanders’s claim that Jews attributed their salvation to God’s gracious election of Israel, then (like Laato) draws attention to the more radically pessimistic anthropology of Paul.16 The theology of Second Temple Judaism, Eskola believes, was preoccupied with issues of theodicy – and necessarily so, in view of the series of disasters that had overtaken the Jewish people. The result was that, for most Jewish groups, the covenant was no longer believed to secure their standing as God’s people. In different categories of Jewish literature from the time, Eskola traces what he describes as a “soteriological dualism” and a growing individualism: no longer able simply to rely on their Jewishness, Jews came to believe that virtuous conduct was required for salvation, and that Jews who did not show such conduct would be eternally damned. The divine “service” imposed upon Israel required wholehearted obedience to the whole law of Moses, an obedience that was a matter of life and death. On the other hand, Eskola (like Laato) believes that repentance and virtuous conduct were always thought to be within the grasp of individual Jews. The resulting theology, Eskola claims, should not be considered legalistic: though human actions affected salvation, both the reality of the temple cult and Jewish covenantal theology served to guarantee that God was assigned a prominent role as well. Salvation was thought to be dependent on God’s mercy, but it came with a condition: repentance and a commitment to observing Moses’ law. Such a soteriology is best labeled “synergistic.” Pauline soteriology, on the other hand, cannot be synergistic, since Paul believed all human beings live under the power of sin: as godless sinners, human beings are utterly incapable of contributing to their own salvation. Like contemporary Jewish theology, Paul believed that God’s eschatological judgment would fall on the godless; but his radical concept of sin meant that all human beings are susceptible to such wrath. Salvation can only be based on God’s justifying activity, shown to those who respond to the divine call with faith in Christ.

15  Note

as well, in Laato, “Righteousness,” the perfect “fit” he sees between Paul’s anthropology and his use of righteousness language – to indicate God’s saving activity and the righteousness God grants to sinners. 16  In the discussion that follows, I avoid using the term “predestination” even though it figures largely in Eskola’s discussion. I have myself found his idiosyncratic use of the term confusing, and assume that, in a short summary, it would confuse others as well.

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Lauri Thurén Lauri Thurén’s call for “source criticism” of Paul’s letters17 is an appeal to recognize that their primary aim was not to disclose his thinking but to persuade his audience. In his monograph Derhetorizing Paul, Thurén distinguishes between a “static” and a “dynamic” reading of the epistles.18 The former approach is taken by those who read the letters as though their purpose was to make statements of timeless, universal theology. Such readings mistake the nature of Paul’s writings, regardless of whether the reader then concludes that Paul was or was not coherent in his theological claims. A dynamic reading, on the other hand, recognizes that Paul wrote, not textbooks, but letters intended to influence the thinking and behavior of his addressees. Indeed, in the service of these aims, he frequently invoked such common rhetorical ploys as exaggeration, vituperation, and the creation of straw-men, or “soft opponents.” An awareness of the rhetorical nature of his discourse will prevent us from taking all that he wrote at face value. Is it a mistake, then, to consider Paul a theologian? Thurén thinks not. Certainly, the arguments with which Paul attempted to convince his audiences were theological; in that sense. we can say that he saw himself as a theologian. Nor should we think that, because Paul addressed particular situations in his correspondence, he was merely a situational thinker. The task of the Pauline interpreter is to identify his persuasive devices, “filter out” their effect on what he wrote, and see whether or not, underlying it all, there is a coherent theological system. With that in mind, Thurén turns to the subject of the law. Conscious of Paul’s persuasive purposes, we ought not to be surprised by the negative content and tone of his comments about the law in Galatians, nor ought we to conclude that Paul’s own attitude toward the law was negative: anxious that his readers not submit to certain ritual aspects of the law, Paul would have undermined his own message if he had spoken in more positive ways. On the other hand, when Paul attempted to deal with the delicate relationship between Gentile and Jewish Christians in Rome, a more balanced treatment was required. In 1 Corinthians, Paul was concerned to modify his readers’ interpretation of his own former teaching without (of course!) suggesting that the latter should be rejected. Hence, the pattern of initial agreement with his addressees on a point at issue, followed by the introduction of other considerations that alter the picture.

17 

See the opening remarks of his article “Straw Men.” Derhetorizing Paul, 23–35.

18 Thuren,



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When rhetorical considerations are taken into account, Thurén believes that a “fairly clear and solid” view of the law emerges from Paul’s writings.19 Here we must be content to note three areas in which he argues this to be the case. 1. Paul has been held to use the term “law” in different senses in Galatians without signaling any shift. But since Paul’s opponents discussed cultic rules, such rules inevitably dominate his purpose-driven response. On the other hand, when Paul finds the core of the law in the love commandment (Gal 5:14), he is not reducing the law to its moral component, but insisting (in a way that has a number of Jewish parallels) that a single basic intention or demand lies behind both the moral and the cultic prescriptions of the law. Nor should Paul’s claim in this verse that love fulfills the law be thought to contradict his talk elsewhere of Christian freedom: freedom from the law, in Paul’s mind, does not entail an exemption from the basic principle underlying its many regulations. 2. In speaking of the law both as intended to convey life (Rom 7:10) and as incapable of doing so (Gal 3:21), Paul has simply chosen, for persuasive purposes, to highlight different aspects of what he believed about the law in different contexts. All becomes clear once a further premise is spelled out: the law has the ability to give life, but since nobody complies with its demands, that ability is never realized. Not even in Galatians does Paul challenge the notion that the law gives life to any who obey it (cf. Gal 3:12); nor does he ever suggest in Romans that the law in fact produces life (cf. Rom 7:7–9; 8:3). 3. Paul contrasts justification by faith with justification by the works of the law. Both those scholars who base their reconstruction of a “legalistic” Jewish soteriology on these texts and those who think Paul here distorts Jewish soteriology have failed to heed the rhetorical nature of the argument. Paul is not attempting a neutral description of what others believe, nor does he explicitly charge others with “legalism.” The contrast he draws is meant to highlight the gracious aspect of his own position; in the process, he presses what he construes as the implication of others’ views to an absurd, and therefore discredited, conclusion. On the other hand, if Paul were not exaggerating a recognizable aspect of others’ soteriology, his argument would carry no conviction. His rhetoric presupposes that, regardless of how much Jews or Jewish Christians emphasized the grace of God, they also acknowledged the importance of good works for salvation. And, indeed, further studies have shown a one-sided19 Thurén,

Derhetorizing Paul, 185.

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ness in Sanders’s depiction of Jewish soteriology. There was more to the difference between Paul and Judaism than the conviction that Jesus is the Christ; rarely do we find in Jewish texts parallels to Paul’s radical depiction of all humanity’s guilt or to his explicit discounting of any human contribution to salvation. Why, according to Thurén, does Paul reject the law? Perhaps Paul believed that the Jewish law must be done away if the universal monotheism spoken of by the prophets is to be achieved. Or perhaps he thought it important to exclude the boasting before God that is liable to accompany pretensions of keeping the law.

Sundry Observations 1. Half a century ago, Krister Stendahl warned us against attributing the introspective conscience characteristic of a later age to a first-century apostle whose own conscience was remarkably robust. 20 I cannot resist the impression that Räisänen (following Sanders) has attributed the crisis of faith experienced by many in the modern age to a first-century apostle21 whose own faith, or self-assurance, or assurance of faith, or whatever one wants to call it, has always struck readers (friends and foes alike) as (gloriously, or maddeningly) robust. Professor Räisänen must pardon some of us for whom the picture of a Paul (a Paul?) plagued by doubts about the tenability of his own basic convictions will take a little getting used to. 2. Whatever the explanation, it is clear that Räisänen and Kuula repeatedly see inconsistencies and contradictions in Paul’s writings where others see complementary lines of thought. When, for example, Paul explains Jewish rejection of the gospel both as the outworking of a divine plan and as an expression of culpable human disobedience (Romans 9 and 10), the two explanations are deemed mutually complementary by some, mutually contradictory by others. A further example: in principle there can be no disobedience where there is no requirement to be obeyed; in that sense law (broadly defined) must precede (and even, in a sense, be the instrumental cause of) the sinful act. On the other hand, were there in human beings no inclination to disobey, presumably the imposition of a requirement would not lead to disobedience; in that sense, (a kind of dormant) sin precedes the law. It is perhaps not surprising that some find Paul’s attempts to illuminate 20 

Stendahl, “Introspective Conscience,” 78–96. e. g., the references to Paul’s “anguish” and his “desperate” wrestlings with doubts and dilemmas in Räisänen, “Loyalties.” 21  Note,



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different aspects of this chicken-and-egg relationship contradictory while others find them revealing. 3. Sanders’s work was an important corrective of earlier caricatures of Judaism. Ironically, however, I believe that it imposes on Judaism distinctions between grace and works that are derived from Paul but foreign to the thinking of his non-Christian compatriots. Of course Jews believed in, and were grateful for, the grace of God. Of course their observance of the law was, at its best, an expression of love for God and gratitude for his goodness. These are important reminders. But Jews did not programmatically assign God’s election of his people, or their own place in the age to come, to divine grace as opposed to human deeds or merit. Paul did, for reasons linked to the nature of his (Christian) soteriology. It is thus misleading, I believe, to say that the relation between grace and works is the same in Judaism as in Paul’s writings. In this respect, I agree with observations made by Thurén (noted above). 4. On the other hand, I do not think (as Thurén does) that Paul exaggerates the “legalism” of Judaism for rhetorical purposes. As I read Paul, he saw Judaism simply as life under the Sinaitic covenant which, though gloriously (2 Cor 3:7–11) and graciously (Rom 9:4) given by God to Israel, did require deeds in conformity with its prescriptions as its path to life (Rom 2:13; 10:5; Gal 3:12). Moreover, for Paul, the position of Jews under the Mosaic law is, essentially, no different from that of every human being: all are expected to do good and avoid evil if they are to be granted eternal life (Rom 2:6–13). That Jews have been given the law in written form puts them in a position to instruct Gentiles – who nonetheless possess within themselves an awareness – of the goodness required of Jews and Gentiles alike (Rom 2:6–27). 22 It is because the positions of Jews and Gentiles in this regard are both distinct and analogous that Paul can sometimes speak of Gentiles as not under the law, at other times as (like Jews) its subjects. 5. Thurén seems to me to grasp the point of Paul’s superficially contradictory statements that the law was given “for life” (Rom 7.10) and that it cannot justify: the law promises life to those who obey its commands, but human sin blocks this path to salvation. I would add that this latter turn of events does not, for Paul, represent a failure in the plan or purpose of the God who gave the law, nor does it make the giving of the law pointless: good is good, evil is evil, and a righteous God cannot but require moral beings to respect the difference. It is the great merit of Laato’s monograph to have introduced 22  Here Paul approximates those Jewish thinkers who identified Torah with Wisdom, or with “the law of nature.”

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consideration of Paul’s “pessimistic” anthropology into the post-Sanders debate. 6. Eskola is one of a number of scholars23 who have reminded us that, in many Second Temple texts, the covenant is no longer thought to be salvific for the majority of Jews – because of the sins of God’s people. Paul, to be sure, goes further: all are under (the power of) sin, no one is righteous, no one is justified by the works of the law. Still, the parallels are striking, and call in question the frequent claim24 that, in the context of Jewish covenantal nomism, with its provisions for atonement and forgiveness, Paul could not have rejected the Sinaitic law and covenant in the belief that sin had nullified their efficacy. 7. Kuula (following Sanders) maintains that Paul could not have opposed the law because it is based on works rather than on grace since he was not in principle against human “activism”: after all, Paul no less than the Mosaic law demands righteous behavior of his converts. 25 In fact, there are times when Paul insists, in a programmatic way rarely found in contemporary Jewish texts, that God operates on the basis of his grace to the exclusion of human works (e. g., Rom 4:4–6; 9:16; 11:6). But “activism” as such is not the issue. The point for Paul (as suggested above) appears to be rather that the law demands righteous works of people “under sin,” in a “flesh” that is hostile to God. If the “ungodly” (a category that included Jews like Paul as well as Gentiles; cf. Rom 4:5; 5:6, 8) are to be justified, if those “under sin” are to be transferred to the realm of grace, if the dead are to be made alive, then the change will have to take place without any contribution from the dead, the slaves of sin, the ungodly. Thus, for Paul, salvific grace must exclude human contributions in a way that is not typically articulated or necessary in Jewish texts. That Paul expects those made alive in Christ to live righteously should neither be overlooked nor allowed to obscure Paul’s conviction that a divine creative act must first put them in a position to do so. 8. Much that is important to Paul is lost to view when he is said to have rejected the Jewish law and covenant simply because no alternative to christocentric soteriology could be entertained. On that argument, Judaism becomes (together with all other alternatives to Paul’s scheme) simply one of the false religions of Paul’s day. But there is no reason to doubt Paul when he says (what he would not have said of non-Jewish religions) that the Mosaic law embodies the good that God requires of human beings (compare Rom 2:10 and 13; note also 2:17–20) and that, as part of the covenant, it is given to 23 

See in particular Elliott, Survivors. E. g., Kuula, Law, 2.90–91, 167. 25 Kuula, Law, 2.109, 134, 150, etc. 24 



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the most favored of peoples (Rom 9:4). Their failure to live up to its terms thus becomes for Paul the ultimate demonstration of the depth of human sinfulness (so Rom 3.19: if even the favored people of God are shown to be sinners, then all the world is culpable) and of the necessity of a fresh and extraordinary revelation of the righteousness of God (Rom 3:21–22, following vv. 19–20). That same failure is the reason why, of the blessing that the covenant promises those who obey its laws and the curse it pronounces on transgressors, Paul believes that only the latter is operative (2 Cor 3:7, 9; Gal 3:10; cf. Rom 7:10). Only when these basic Pauline convictions are overlooked or rejected can one claim that Paul’s gospel represents bad news for the Jews rather than good news for all nations. 9. To sum up: Paul saw no tension between the law’s condition of obedience as its path to life and his conviction that salvation is to be found in the Christian gospel: the same requirement of righteousness underlies both. It is precisely because human beings are not righteous in the ordinary way (i. e., by doing the righteous deeds spelled out in the law) that God has provided, in the gospel, an extraordinary means by which sinners can be found righteous (Rom 3:23–24; 4:5, etc.). Romans 5:1–11 suggests that Paul found, at the most existential level, profound joy rather than tormenting Angst at this resolution of the “problem” of the law. 10. So I read Paul. What is in any case clear is that different positions in the current debate have strong advocates among contemporary Finnish scholars. Bibliography Aejmelaeus, Lars, and Antti Mustakallio, eds. The Nordic Paul: Finnish Approaches to Pauline Theology. London: T. & T. Clark, 2008. Bultmann, Rudolf. “Christ the End of the Law.” In Bultmann, Essays, Philosophical and Theological. London: SCM, 1955, 36–66. Dunn, James D. G., editor. Paul and the Mosaic Law. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1996. Elliott, Mark Adam. The Survivors of Israel: A Reconsideration of the Theology of Pre-Christian Judaism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. Eskola, Timo. Theodicy and Predestination in Pauline Soteriology.Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998. Kuula, Kari. The Law, the Covenant and God’s Plan, Vol. 1: Paul’s Polemical Treatment of the Law in Galatians; Vol. 2: Paul’s Treatment of the Law and Israel in Romans. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999–2003. Laato, Timo. “‘God’s Righteousness’ – Once Again.” In The Nordic Paul: Finnish Approaches to Pauline Theology, edited by Lars Aejmelaeus and Antti Mustakallio. London: T. & T. Clark, 2008, 40–73.

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– Paul and Judaism: An Anthropological Approach. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Montefiore, Claude G. Judaism and St. Paul. London: Max Goschen, 1914. Räisänen, Heikki. “The ‘Law’ of Faith and Spirit.” In Räisänen, Jesus, Paul and Torah: Collected Essays. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1992, 48–68. – “Legalism and Salvation by the Law.” In Die paulinische Literatur und Theologie, edited by S. Pedersen. Aarhus: Aros, 1980, 63–83. – Paul and the Law. Second edition; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987. – “Paul’s Word-Play on νόμος: A Lingustic Study.” In Räisänen, Jesus, Paul and Torah: Collected Essays. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1992, 69–94. – “Torn Between Two Loyalties: Romans 9–11 and Paul’s Conflicting Convictions.” In The Nordic Paul: Finnish Approaches to Pauline Theology, edited by Lars Aejmelaeus and Antti Mustakallio. London: T. & T. Clark, 2008, 19–39. – “The Use of ἐπιθυμία and ἐπιθυμεῖν in Paul.” In Jesus, Paul and Torah: Collected Essays. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1992, 95–111. Sanders, E. P. Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977. Stendahl, Krister. “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West.” In Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976, 78–96. Thurén, Lauri. Derhetorizing Paul: A Dynamic Perspective on Pauline Theology and the Law. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000. – “Fighting Against Straw Men: Derhetorizing Theology and History in Paul.” In The Nordic Paul: Finnish Approaches to Pauline Theology, edited by Lars Aejmelaeus and Antti Mustakallio. London: T. & T. Clark, 2008, 195–208. Westerholm, Stephen. “The ‘New Perspective’ at Twenty-Five.” In Justification and Variegated Nomism, Vol. 2: The Paradoxes of Paul, edited by D. A Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004, 1–38. – Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.

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The Righteousness of the Law and the Righteousness of Faith in Romans Most readers of the New Testament would, I imagine, have little trouble identifying the following text as Pauline: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1).1 Not nearly so many, I suspect, would readily link Paul’s name with a verse found earlier in the same epistle: “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified” (2:13). Nor is the difficulty of associating the latter verse with Paul confined to casual readers of the Bible. Pauline scholars have commonly found much in Romans 2 “un-Pauline” and attributed parts or the whole of the chapter to an interpolator, 2 to material borrowed but not assimilated by the apostle,3 or to Paul’s assuming, for the sake of the argument, the perspective of his opponents.4 One way or another, Paul did not mean – he could not have meant – that “the doers of the law … will be justified.” Alas, the thesis of Romans 2:13 is not as isolated in the Pauline corpus as it seems to those who explain it away. The notion that doers of the law will be found righteous is presumably what Paul has in mind when he speaks elsewhere of the “righteousness that comes from the law” (Rom 10:5; Phil 3:9). To be sure, Paul contrasts the righteousness of the law with that of faith, and it is the path of faith that he advocates. The explanation lies near to hand, then, that the righteousness of the law is, for Paul, no more than the so-called “righteousness” pursued by others, as he himself had pursued it in the past. Such an understanding would fit well with the view that Paul attempts to refute opponents on their own grounds in Romans 2. Yet nowhere in the chapter does Paul hint that the premises of his argument are not his own. Indeed, Romans 2 is replete with biblical themes and echoes of biblical texts: would Paul have formulated in these terms a position with which he himself disagreed? And though elsewhere advocating the righteousness of faith rather than that of the law, when Paul articulates the operative principle of the latter, he quotes not opponents whom he can dismiss 1 

Biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version. Romans, 46–49. 3 Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 123–135. 4  Fitzmyer, “Romans,” 837. 2 O’Neill,

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as misguided, but Moses himself – whose words are not readily dismissed (Rom 10:5; cf. Gal 3:12). In Paul’s mind, a “righteousness” propounded by Moses in Scripture cannot be of the “so-called” variety. No doubt some of the confusion that surrounds “justification by faith” in contemporary Pauline scholarship is related to the widespread failure to find a place in Paul’s thought for the righteousness of the law with which he compares it. Before we turn to these topics, however, something must be said of “righteousness” language itself.

The Language of “Righteousness” When the Matthean Jesus declares those “blessed” who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matt 5:6), commentators are quick to point out that, in the Matthean text, “righteousness” (δικαιοσύνη) does not mean the divine gift of “justification,”5 but denotes right conduct on the part of human beings.6 The meaning assigned to “righteousness” in Matthew (in implicit or explicit contrast with Paul) is in fact the ordinary meaning of the term throughout Scripture: broadly speaking, “righteousness” is what one ought to do, and to “declare” people “righteous” (or “justify” them) is to find them to have done what they ought. A few illustrations must suffice.7 According to LXX Ezekiel 18:5,8 the “righteous” person practices judgment and “righteousness”: what is entailed in the practice of “righteousness” is spelled out in a list of things to be done (vv. 6–9). The cases of a sinful child and a righteous grandchild of one who is righteous are then discussed, and it is insisted that the righteous will live because of the righteousness that they themselves have done, whereas the one who sins will die. According to LXX Ezekiel 33:13, 18, all the “righteousnesses” (δικαιοσύνη is here read in the plural) that the “righteous” have done will be forgotten if they turn from their “righteousness” and commit acts of lawlessness. That the “righteous” person is the one who does “righteousness” may seem tautological, but the author of 1 John thinks it a truth too easily overlooked: “Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right [literally, “does righteousness”] is righteous, just as he is righteous” (3:7). 5 So δικαιοσύνη is frequently rendered, especially in Pauline texts. The cognate verb in Greek, δικαιόω , is commonly rendered “justify.” 6  E. g., Luz, Matthew 1–7, 237. 7  I have treated the matter in greater detail in my Perspectives, 263–273. 8  Septuagintal texts are cited because they share with Paul the same Greek vocabulary. In the Hebrew parent text, the terms rendered in Greek by δίκαιος and its cognates are regularly ‫ צדיק‬and its related terms.



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The verb “declare righteous” or “justify” is commonly used in judicial contexts, where it means “find innocent of wrongdoing,” “acquit.” Several Septuagintal texts underline the importance of “justifying” (“declaring righteous”) the “righteous” and the wrongfulness of “justifying” (“declaring righteous”) the “ungodly” (Exod 23:7; Deut 25:1; Isa 5:23; cf. Sir 9:12). Note that the judgment by which either the righteous (rightly) or the wicked (wrongly) are declared to be righteous affects neither the righteousness of the former nor the wickedness of the latter: righteous and wicked they remain, though in the latter instance justice has been subverted (so Deut 16:19; cf. Prov 17:15, 26). It is thus not the case that “the ‘righteous’ one is that one in a legal action … who wins his case or is acquitted.”9 The righteous are those who ought to prevail in court – because they are righteous – whether or not this happens. It is sometimes suggested that “righteousness” language, when understood in a “Hebrew” rather than a “Greek” way, is “covenantal.”10 The truth in the claim lies in the clear obligation of those who enter a covenant to keep the commitments they make when they enter it. Still, “righteousness” itself pertains to all that one ought to do, whether or not one is party to a covenant.11 The contrast between the “righteous” and the “wicked,” together with that between the “wise” and “fools,” is perhaps the central motif of the book of Proverbs. Yet the framework of Proverbs is not covenantal. Since God “by wisdom” created heaven and earth (Prov 3:19), it behooves human beings everywhere to gain “wisdom” and to govern themselves accordingly (thus living in harmony with the wise ordering of the cosmos) if they, as the “wise” and “righteous,” would prosper. According to Genesis 18, Sodom’s destruction would have been avoided had its citizens included ten who were “righteous” (18:23–32): though no party to a covenant, they were expected to be “righteous.” Conversely, those who do belong to the covenant people of God are not thought to be “righteous” for that reason. Israel was set apart from the nations as “holy” (Deut 7:6), but Deuteronomy flatly denies that its people were “righteous” (9:4–6). Nor is covenant membership the issue when Israelite judges decide the “rightness” of particular complaints. Egregious wrongs excluded wrongdoers from the community. But not all cases involved egregious wrongs in which judges (or God) were to “declare the righteous to be in the right, rewarding them according to their righteousness” (LXX 1 Kgs [= 3 Kgdms] 8:32). Throughout the Hebrew and Greek scriptures, then, “righteous” and “wicked” are found side by side, in Israel and among other nations. The 9 Bultmann,

Theology, 1.272. E. g., Dunn, Theology, 341–342. 11  For a fuller treatment, see Seifrid, “Language.” 10 

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two are distinguished by their deeds. And whether one is “righteous” or “wicked” matters supremely when God judges the world and all its people in righteousness (Ps 96:13; 98:9). If the ordinary sense of “righteousness” in the scriptures is “what one ought to do,” it would be extremely odd if Paul did not betray a similar usage; so odd the apostle was not. Note, for example, the contrast Paul frequently draws between “righteousness” (and its cognates) and “sin” (and its synonyms) – that is, between what one ought to do and what one ought not. The claim that all are “under the power of sin” (Rom 3:9) is confirmed by the scriptural declaration that not a single person is “righteous.” (The declaration is immediately expanded upon by various illustrations of human turpitude [3:10–18].) If one would scarcely die for a person who is “righteous,” how much more astounding is it that Christ died for “sinners” (5:7–8)? “Righteousness,” moreover, has nothing in common with “lawlessness” (2 Cor 6:14). Readers in Romans 6 are urged to devote themselves to the service of “righteousness” rather than to that of “sin” (or “impurity,” “iniquity” [6:18, 19]). Paul is not aware of wrongdoing on his part. But since the Lord, not he, is the only competent judge of such matters, Paul acknowledges that he cannot be “found righteous” (or “justified”; NRSV “acquitted”) on the basis merely of what he knows about himself (1 Cor 4:4).12 Righteousness, then, for Paul as for the rest of Scripture, frequently means “what one ought to do.” How does Paul conceive human obligation? His most telling discussion is in Romans 1:18–32, where he elaborates on a charge of unrighteousness (ἀδικία) brought against all humanity (1:18): “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness [ἀδικίαν, “unrighteousness”) of those who by their wickedness [ἐν ἀδικίᾳ] suppress the truth.” In the argument that follows, those who would flaunt their imagined freedom from obligations that they choose not to embrace are tersely dismissed. We are born into a world not of our making, and incur thereby, and in the course of living, obligations that we may shirk or defy but are in no position to set aside. God, as God, is to be worshiped by God’s creatures (1:19–21, 25). Moreover, what is appropriate to human sexuality was determined when humans were created as sexual beings and is to be respected in human behavior (1:26–27). Human beings are further bound to respect the lives of their fellows, to devise no ill against them, to speak the truth about them, to keep faith in their commitments, to show compassion where compassion is called for – and so on (1:28–32). 12  Note that, as commonly in the Septuagintal texts, the verb δικαιόω here means “declare righteous”, “find innocent,” “acquit.” Whether or not Paul is “righteous” in the matter under discussion depends on whether or not he has himself done wrong. But when God assesses what Paul has done, he will declare (not make) Paul “righteous” (or guilty).



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These basic obligations of “righteousness” are seen as inherent in the human condition; and, at some level, all human beings know both what they ought to do and that God rightly condemns those who refuse to do it (1:32). Two observations about Paul’s argument are worth making here. First, Paul speaks (implicitly) of the requirement of “righteousness” and (explicitly) of the condemnation of “unrighteousness” without referring to the Mosaic law. The law was given to Israel, but the obligation to practice righteousness is universal. Second, although divine expectations of righteous behavior on the part of all human beings and, accordingly, divine judgment of all are spelled out most fully in Romans, they are implicit in all Paul’s letters wherever he considers human behavior sinful or anticipates divine judgment. The Thessalonians had responded to the gospel in order to be delivered from the outpouring of divine wrath that awaits sinful humanity (1:10; 5:3–10). In Corinth, too, Paul’s efforts were directed toward “saving” all he could (1 Cor 9:22; 10:33) in view of the condemnation that awaits the world outside the church (1 Cor 1:18; 5:13; 11:32) – because its people fail to live as they ought (cf. 1 Cor 6:1, 9–10; 2 Cor 6:14). The Philippians, by believing the gospel, had themselves escaped the perdition in store for a “crooked and perverse generation” (2:15; cf. 1:28). None of this should surprise us: no religious Jew doubted that God expected people, all people, to do what is right (admittedly, Jews differed in their understanding of the extent and nature of those obligations) and would judge those who did not. Paul’s notions of what we may call “ordinary righteousness” were quite at home in contemporary Jewish circles.

The (Ordinary) Righteousness of the Law According to Romans 2, God will one day “repay” all according to their “deeds”: those – Jews and non-Jews alike – who have done what is “good” will be granted eternal life; those – Jews and non-Jews alike – who have done evil will face “anguish and distress” (2:5–11). Clearly, the demand for what is “good” in these verses parallels the expectation of (ordinary) “righteousness” outlined above, just as the “evil” of 2:8–9 corresponds to the “unrighteousness” condemned in 1:18. To this point, the divine requirements made of all human beings continue to be discussed without mention of the Jewish law. The law is introduced in 2:12. Those who possess it will be judged by it; those without the law will be judged without reference to its provisions. But what the law requires of its adherents, in this passage, is simply the “good” expected of all human beings, as spelled out in the immediately preceding

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verses. If 2:6–11 declares that those who do the good will be granted eternal life, 2:13 restates the same principle in its claim that “the doers of the law” will be “justified” (or “declared righteous”).13 One might suppose that only Jews (who “hear” the law) could be its “doers”; but Paul, bent on showing that Jews and Gentiles are judged by the same criterion, insists that this is not the case. Gentiles, too, he notes, do things that the law commands, and whenever they do so, they show that they, too, are aware of “what the law requires.” It has been “written on their hearts” (2:14–15; cf. 1:32). Hence, Gentiles no less than Jews are required to be “doers of the law” if they are to be found “righteous” on the day of judgment (2:13). Paul’s point has often been missed because of the confusion provoked by his reference to Gentiles who do “what the law requires” (2:14). Did he (readers have often wondered) envisage the possibility of Gentiles being deemed “righteous” because their deeds are acceptable to God? The answer to that question cannot be answered, at least on the basis of this verse: it is simply not discussed.14 Paul wants to show that Gentiles and Jews are subject to the same criterion of judgment (they must do what is “good” [2:7, 10]), even though Jews, but not Gentiles, possess the law. Assuming that what the law requires is the goodness expected of every human being, Paul insists that Gentiles, too, are aware of their obligations: witness the times they do what the law commands, as well as the activity of their own consciences and thoughts in approving or disapproving what they do. In this passage, then, the law of Moses is not thought to provide Jews with a path to “righteousness” that is peculiar to themselves; it merely gives them unique guidance about the goodness required of all. Still, it is doubtless of benefit to have one’s obligations enunciated clearly: possession of the law enables Jews to instruct Gentiles in their mutual responsibilities. But the ability to communicate a command does not exempt the communicators from their own obligation to observe it. You, then, that teach others, will you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You that forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You that abhor idols, do you rob temples? (2:21–22)

13  Note again that the verb means “find righteous,” “declare to be righteous.” In the parallel expression in the first part of the verse, the mere “hearers” of the law are not found to be “righteous in God’s sight.” Divine judgment here leads not to being made righteous but to being recognized as the “righteous” (or guilty) person one is on the basis of one’s deeds. 14  Note that Paul goes on to speak of the conscience of the same Gentiles (the subject of 2:15 is the same as that of v. 14) who do “what the law requires” and to speak of their self-accusatory “or perhaps” self-excusatory thoughts: his formulation suggests that the incidence of excusatory thoughts is less likely or less frequent than that of accusatory ones. Paul does not mean to designate these Gentiles “righteous.”



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Circumcision is introduced into the discussion in verses 25–29; the same point is being made. The only “circumcision” that matters in the end is the spiritual “circumcision” shown by those – whether or not they are physically circumcised – who actually do what the law commands. Paul posits the various possibilities: a circumcised Jew who keeps the law (his circumcision has value [v. 25a]); a circumcised Jew who transgresses the law (his circumcision has no value [v. 25b]); and an uncircumcised non-Jew who keeps it (his uncircumcision amounts to the circumcision that has value [vv. 26–27]). (The case of the uncircumcised non-Jew who does not keep the law is omitted since it is of no use to the argument.) In no case is it part of Paul’s argument to affirm that there are individuals who fill each category.15 His point is that keeping the (moral requirements of the) law is what matters – for Jews and Gentiles, circumcised and (physically) uncircumcised, alike. In Romans 2, then, Paul finds in the law a statement of the requirements of goodness incumbent on all human beings. The same understanding is implicit elsewhere in Romans. To support his claim that the law itself is “good,” Paul notes in Romans 7 that what the law commands is “holy and just (δικαία) and good” (7:12). He means, not that conduct otherwise neutral becomes “just” (“righteous”) and “good” when (and because) the law commands it, but that behavior that is righteous and good is spelled out in the law. In 7:16, the law is again recognized as “good” because (as the context makes clear) what it commands is recognized as “what I want.” According to 4:15 and 5:13, sin exists in the world even apart from law (e. g., murder was wrong even before the law was given). However, when the law’s demands were made (e. g., “You shall not murder”), deeds (such as murder) that were sinful in any case became also transgressions of the law. Such an understanding of the Mosaic law is not peculiar to Paul. Beginning at least with Sirach 24:23 (but see already Deut 4:6–8!), Jewish thought had identified the “wisdom” by which all human beings should live with the Mosaic Torah.16 Those familiar with Greco-Roman thought stressed Torah’s agreement with “nature.”17 In principle, those who presented the 15  Romans 2:27 is often thought to posit the existence of uncircumcised Gentiles who keep the law, and the question is then raised whether Paul is thinking of non-Christian or Christian Gentiles. But the conditional force of v. 26 is continued in v. 27 (the subject of v. 27, “those who are physically uncircumcised but keep the law,” parallels “those who are uncircumcised” but “keep the requirements of the law” in the conditional sentence of v. 26). Pressing the point that keeping the law, not physical circumcision, is what matters, Paul insists that an uncircumcised keeper of the law would be better off than a circumcised transgressor. All the relevant possibilities have thus been covered to illustrate the principle. But it is the principle, not the existence of people under each category, that Paul is bent on establishing. 16 Finsterbusch, Thora, 31–38; Schnabel, Law and Wisdom, 89, 162. 17  E. g., 4 Macc 5:25–26; Philo, Creation 3; Moses 2.52.

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Mosaic law in these terms either had to focus exclusively on its moral demands or insist that its “ceremonial” commands, too, were binding on all humankind. Paul takes the former approach. Not only are the commands he cites exclusively moral (Rom 2:21–22); physical circumcision is discussed as though its presence, while potentially “of value,” is quite a separate matter from the fulfillment of the law (2:25–27). The law of which all are expected to be “doers” (2:13) amounts to the moral demands of the Mosaic Torah. But no human being, according to Romans 3:9–20, is “righteous” in this way. Summing up the whole argument, Paul writes, “No human being [literally, “no flesh”] will be justified in [God’s] sight by deeds prescribed by the law” (3:20, echoing Ps 143:2); that is, no one who does not do the good required of human beings can be declared righteous on the basis of a law that articulates the requirement.18 Far from contradicting Romans 2:13, the judgment of 3:20 presupposes its truth: the fundamental principle of the righteousness of the law is that the “doers of the law [and only the “doers,” not mere “hearers”] will be justified.” That no one meets the requirement is, in effect, an accident of human history. The requirements stands firm. The same principle is expressed in Galatians 3:12, here in a quotation from Leviticus 18:5: “Whoever does the works of the law [literally, “does them,” i. e., the requirements spelled out in the law] will live by them.” To be a “doer of the law” (Rom 2:13) is to be one who “does” what it requires (Gal 3:12). Such a person is promised life in Galatians 3:12; he or she is deemed “righteous” and granted eternal life in Romans 2. Romans 10:5 provides the missing link between the verses: the basic principle of the law is repeated in the terms of Galatians 3:12 (the same quotation from Lev 18:5 is given), but the principle itself is labeled the “righteousness that comes from the law,” showing (as does Rom 2:13) that “doing” what the law commands is the path to being recognized as “righteous” in God’s eyes. In Galatians, the topic is addressed because Paul’s Gentile converts had been told that they needed to be circumcised and to submit to the (distinctively Jewish) requirements of the Mosaic law if they wanted to belong to God’s people. Paul responds, however, not by arguing against the importance of particular demands of the law, but by insisting that the law itself, inasmuch as it requires obedience to its demands, can hardly serve as a path to righteousness for “sinners” who have broken its requirements (cf. 2:15–17). Rather, it encounters them as a “curse” (3:10), confining them 18  In the context, the “deeds prescribed by the law” that do not justify must be the moral requirements of the law that people do not meet: Paul’s point is both clarified and confirmed by the Scripture that insists that “flesh” cannot be “righteous” in God’s sight. Paul is not saying here that particular requirements of the law (the “boundary-markers” of circumcision and Jewish food and festival laws) are not necessary for justification. See my Perspectives, 300–321.



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under the power of “sin” until God’s redemption in Christ is revealed (3:21–26; 4:4–5). The “righteousness that comes from the law” is introduced in Romans 10 only after the point has repeatedly been made that human beings do not – they cannot – submit to God’s law (3:10–18; 7:7–25; 8:7–8); that the law, though itself “good” (7:12, 16), is too “weak” to secure obedience to its demands (8:3; cf. 7:14); that its practical effect is to bring “knowledge” of sin (3:20; 7:7), define sin as transgression (4:15; 5:13), and serve as the instrument of divine wrath (4:15). Yet Jews, Paul notes, continue to pursue its path to “righteousness”19 rather than submit to the path God has opened up through faith. Still, for all their efforts at achieving the “righteousness that comes from the law,” Paul claims that they have not attained their goal – nor will they do so until they abandon20 the notion that humans can achieve righteousness through their “works” (9:31–32). In short, the Paul of Romans thinks that the righteousness of the law is of no use to sinners (and such are all human beings) and should not be pursued now that God has (for the benefit of sinners) revealed the “righteousness of faith.” But the path itself he finds articulated in Scripture, and he equates it with the divine demand for righteous behavior on the part of all human beings: a requirement presupposed in the gospel (Christ died “for our sins” [1 Cor 15:3]) that he in no way calls in question. Before we turn to what Paul says about the righteousness of faith, something should be said about his portrayal of the Jewish path to righteousness. Did Jews not see their place in the covenant, rather than their observance of the law, as securing their salvation? Has Paul not distorted Judaism by detaching the Mosaic law from its covenantal framework? And has he not overlooked the law’s own provisions for atonement of transgressions? This is not the place for a full-scale discussion.21 Nevertheless, the following points may be noted. 19  Though (according to Romans 2) the law spells out the goodness required of all human beings, it is natural to link the pursuit of “righteousness” through the law with the Jewish people, to whom the law was given. Paul does so here and in Philippians 3. 20  In Philippians 3, Paul speaks of his own pursuit of the righteousness of the law only to note that he has now abandoned it for the righteousness of faith (3:4–10). As in Romans, the former righteousness pertains to moral human behavior: one is, or is not, “blameless” by its standards (v. 6). Paul’s claim to have been “blameless” is relative (he wants to assure the Philippians that if he, whose fidelity to the law exceeded that of any of its proponents whom they are likely to meet, has nonetheless turned away from it, then they need not listen to such proponents) and is a reflection of his pre-Christian assessment (he could not now have thought persecuting the church [v. 6] a good thing, nor does he now place any stock in the “confidence in the flesh” shown by those who measure their righteousness by their law-observance [3:3–4]). 21  Cf. my Perspectives, 380–383.

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1. As mentioned above, entrance into the covenant was not thought to make Jews “righteous.” “Righteousness,” and enjoyment of life in God’s favor, required submission to its demands (Deut 6:24–25). If Deuteronomy thinks those who are already God’s people nonetheless face the choice of life or death depending on their willingness to obey God’s commands (30:15–20; cf. 11:26–28), Second Temple Judaism repeatedly distinguished the “righteous” from the “wicked” among Jews themselves on the same basis, and it is the “righteous” who will enter life. This, as we have seen, was Paul’s position, too. 2. Paul could not have believed that the Mosaic provisions for atonement remained in effect once Christ had died for the sins of humankind. Presumably, he thought (as did the author of the letter to the Hebrews) that such rites were symbolic from the start, mere adumbrations of the sacrifice of Christ, which alone was effective in atoning for sins. Romans 3:24–26 suggests such an understanding; 1 Corinthians 5:7 might also be cited in support (cf. Col 2:16–17). 3. But there is more to be said. The Mosaic sacrifices for atonement were not thought to be effective unless accompanied by repentance on the part of the transgressor. But a Paul who thought that the mindset of the “flesh” is at enmity with God could hardly have thought unredeemed humanity capable of true repentance (Rom 8:5–8). Put differently: the law in Jewish thought served to distinguish the “wicked” (or “sinners”) from the “righteous.” The latter were not thought to be sinless, but (it was understood) they intended submission to God’s law, and they repented of what wrongs they did. For Paul, however, the law served not to distinguish the incorrigibly “wicked” from the basically “righteous,” but to show that all are “sinners,” the “ungodly,” God’s “enemies” (Rom 3:23; 4:5; 5:6–8, etc.).22 For “sinners” who are not inclined to repent, neither Paul nor other Jews thought that the Mosaic law provided atonement (cf. Num 15:27–31). 4. Paul differs from much Jewish thinking of his day, then, not so much in his understanding of the law itself as in his assessment of human ability (and will) to obey it. Yet the evidence for Paul’s “robust conscience” assembled by Krister Stendahl23 does not suggest a mind schooled to doubt humanity’s capacity to please God. Here we must speak of a post-Damascus reevaluation. If the crucifixion of God’s Son was required to redeem humankind, then the sinfulness of humankind must be both radical in itself and beyond the powers of existing measures to overcome. 22 

Cf. Winninge, Sinners and the Righteous, 306–307. Paul, 78–96.

23 Stendahl,



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The (Extraordinary) Righteousness of Faith What Paul says about the righteousness of faith in Romans follows naturally from his understanding of the righteousness of the law. Here we can only note five of its aspects. 1. In the ordinary use of the terms, “righteousness” is what one ought to do and the “righteous” are those who do it. That Paul was not so obtuse as to have missed the point is apparent not only from his frequent use of “righteousness” terminology in its ordinary sense, but also from his insistence on the extraordinary and paradoxical nature of the “righteousness” that God now offers the unrighteous. Those “justified [= declared righteous] by God’s grace as a gift” in Romans 3:24 are precisely those who have “sinned” and “fall[en] short of the glory of God” in 3:23. Those declared righteous in 4:5 are the “ungodly” – the very term used in Septuagintal texts to designate those who, in contrast to the “righteous,” should not be “justified.” In Romans 5:9, those who have been “declared righteous” are the “ungodly” of verse 6, the “sinners” of verse 8, the “enemies” of God of verse 10. The “many” who are “made righteous” by Christ’s obedience in 5:19 are the same “many” who were “made sinners” by Adam’s disobedience. They are the recipients of an “abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness” (5:17): Paul could scarcely signal more strongly the extraordinary nature of this righteousness! Fittingly, then, Paul repeatedly speaks of the righteousness of faith as an emergency measure introduced by God to offset human unrighteousness and offer life to those otherwise condemned. The (ordinary) “righteousness” that is spelled out in the law is, for Paul, the more basic righteousness, from which the “righteousness” of faith paradoxically borrows its name. “Righteousness … through faith” has “now” been “disclosed” (Rom 3:21– 22) – “now” that it is clear that no “flesh” can be found righteous through obeying the law (3:20). “Faith” has come into the world with Christ for the benefit of those confined by the law to the rule of sin (Gal 3:21–26). That one may be “righteous” on the basis of faith is the message now being proclaimed in the gospel of which Paul is unashamed (Rom 1:16–17). In that the gospel brings “salvation” (1:16), it represents the divine response to a crisis (portrayed in 1:18–3:20). If we are properly to understand what Paul means by “justification by faith,” we must grasp correctly the dilemma he sees it solving: “righteousness,” for Paul, is what sinners, as sinners, lack and need. Neither in Paul’s thought nor in the understanding of contemporaneous Jews does “righteousness” mean the covenant membership that Jews enjoy but from which Gentiles have hitherto been excluded.

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2. The Septuagint insists that it is wrong to declare the “ungodly” “righteous.” Yet God does precisely what the Septuagintal texts forbid – and is righteous in so doing because the death of Christ is linked to the declaration. Romans 3:25 notes that God has not overlooked human sinfulness – that would violate his righteousness – but directed its bane not on the heads of the sinners themselves but on Jesus Christ, who exhausted it when he died as an atoning sacrifice. The same picture is evoked by the reference to Christ’s “blood” in 5:9 (perhaps echoing 3:25). Other pictures are used elsewhere: Christ’s representative act of obedience offsets Adam’s representative act of disobedience (5:15–19); those “freed [literally, “justified”] from sin” have died with Christ to sin (Romans 6); God exchanged the sin of humans with the righteousness of Christ (2 Cor 5:21). It is clear in each case that God is “righteous” in declaring “sinners” “righteous” because “Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor 15:3). The demands of ordinary righteousness (as spelled out in the law), though not met in the ordinary way, are nonetheless presupposed by the Pauline gospel. 3. “Sinners” can only receive “righteousness” as a “free gift” (Rom 5:17; cf. 3:23–24). If the “ungodly” are to be “declared righteous,” it must be “without” the “[righteous] works” on which such a declaration would, in the ordinary way of looking at things, be based (Rom 4:5). The “righteousness” of those whose sins are forgiven is one with which they have been credited “apart from [righteous] works” (4:6).24 The righteousness of faith operates apart from any consideration of the deeds of its recipients in part because they – sinners, the ungodly, those needing forgiveness – have no righteous deeds to offer. But it also represents an offer made by divine grace that (according to Paul’s definition) itself excludes any role for human works (4:4–5; 11:6). And where human deeds play no role, human “boasting” has no place (3:27; 4:2). 4. In Abraham’s case and in that of believers in the gospel, God’s extraordinary “righteousness” is received “by faith.” In both instances, faith is a response to the word (or promise) of God (cf. Rom 10:17). In both cases, it involves trusting God to transform an otherwise hopeless situation. Where 24  Again, note that the “works” that Paul excludes from a role when one is “declared righteous by faith” are the moral works by which one’s “righteousness” is ordinarily assessed; they are not the “boundary-marking” works (circumcision, observance of food and festival laws) that distinguished Jews as members of the covenant. Paul is indeed concerned in Romans 4 to show that the latter are not required of believers. But he raises the issue of circumcision in 4:9–12 only after he has already shown that God declares the ungodly to be righteous “without works” (4:1–8). If the question can be raised whether “this blessedness” (i. e., that which is enjoyed “apart from works” [4:6]) can be experienced by the uncircumcised as well as the circumcised (4:9), then Paul was not dealing with the issue of circumcision when he excluded “works” in 4:6.



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such faith is found, the God “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” proves able to do what he has promised (4:17–25). 5. Those declared “righteous” in an extraordinary way are now to do what is “righteous” (in the ordinary sense [Romans 6]). Paul is no less insistent than Matthew that his converts must actively serve “righteousness.” Distinctively Pauline, however, is the conviction that such a life is possible as one is “led by the Spirit” (8:13–14; cf. v. 4), which has been given to all who belong to Christ (v. 9). The hostility toward God that is inherent in the “flesh” is no longer the mindset of those who “live according to the Spirit” (vv. 5–8). Pauline scholars today understand Judaism far better than did their predecessors who, if they read Jewish sources at all, consulted them merely to corroborate what (they thought) Paul said about his past or his opponents. Modern scholars of Paul have also been made abundantly aware that what provoked Paul’s discussion of justification by faith was the issue whether Gentile believers needed to submit to (the “boundarymarking” aspects of) the Jewish law. And contemporary scholarship has rightly reminded us that the resolution of that issue had wide-ranging implications for the missionary outreach of the church and the day-to-day life of its adherents. In the end, however, it remains the case that Paul’s response to the firstcentury crisis focused not on the “ethnocentrism” (or the “narrow nationalism,” or the “racism”) of those who advocated adherence to particular statutes of the law, but on the inability of the law itself to secure from sinners the obedience it required. The message of “justification by faith” pertains in the first place not to how Gentiles may be included in the Jewish covenant but to how sinners, Jews and Gentiles alike, may enjoy God’s approval. That – apparently without reference to issues raised by the Jewish law – was the essence of Paul’s missionary message to the Thessalonians and the Corinthians. In propounding for the Galatians, Philippians, and Romans a “justification” that is “by faith” rather than by the “works of the law,” Paul merely worked out the implications of a gospel that offered “salvation” to “sinners.” Bibliography Bultmann, Rudolf. Theology of the New Testament. Vols. 1–2. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951. Dunn, James D. G. The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

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Finsterbusch, Karin. Die Thora als Lebensweisung für Heidenchristen: Studien zur Bedeutung der Thora für die paulinischen Ethik. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996. Fitzmyer, Joseph A. “The Letter to the Romans.” In The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by R. E. Brown, J. A. Fitzmyer, and R. E. Murphy. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1990, 830–868. Luz, Ulrich. Matthew 1–7: A Commentary. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989. O’Neill, J. C. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Baltimore: Penguin, 1975. Sanders, E. P. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983. Schnabel, Eckhard J. Law and Wisdom from Ben Sira to Paul: A Tradition Historical Enquiry into the Relation of Law, Wisdom, and Ethics. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1985. Seifrid, Mark A. “Righteousness Language in the Hebrew Scriptures and Early Judaism.” In Justification and Variegated Nomism, Vol. 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism, edited by D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001, 415–442. Stendahl, Krister. Paul Among Jews and Gentiles. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976. Westerholm, Stephen. Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Winninge, Mikael. Sinners and the Righteous: A Comparative Study of the Psalms of Solomon and Paul’s Letters. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1995.

Chapter 14

Paul and the Law in Romans 9–11 Among the few untapped areas for dissertations in the field of biblical studies must be reckoned the classification of various biblical personalities according to the four temperaments of popular physiology: was Noah, or Jacob, or Zephaniah a sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, or melancholic? The many intriguing possibilities cannot be pursued here. Still, perhaps one observation, uncontroversial yet significant for our purposes, may be allowed: whether Jeremiah is properly classified a melancholic or a choleric would require further investigation; but he may be excluded at once from the ranks of the sanguine. Indeed, one of the problems besetting the proverbially weeping prophet throughout his career was the need to distinguish true prophets from false. And the thesis is at least arguable, perhaps even defensible, that much of what Jeremiah said on the subject can be summed up in the dictum, “No true prophet can be a sanguine.” The more remarkable, then, that so unsanguineous a figure as Jeremiah found himself not only investing in Judean real estate at a time when experts declared all the land worth having to be in Egypt, but also proclaiming the purchase a sign of good things to come (Jer 32:1–44). In fact, however, the same convictions that led Jeremiah to announce doom for his contemporaries all but required a message of hope for the future. They are, indeed, assumptions on which the Hebrew Bible as a whole appears to be united. The first conviction, most explicit in wisdom and psalmic materials but assumed throughout, is that creation received its order from a God of awesome goodness, and, hence, that that order is to be celebrated with uninhibited delight, with music and dance and boisterous praise, as itself awesomely good. The second conviction, explicit in wisdom, psalmic, historical, and prophetic materials alike, is that the disorder that disfigures creation owes much to the insistence of human beings on ordering their own affairs independently of, and in conflict with, the wisdom inherent in the divine scheme of things: a course of action seen as quintessentially foolish, wicked, and baneful. In the Hebrew scriptures, disorder is, with a remarkable degree of consistency, explained not in tragic terms as the surfacing of tensions or flaws inherent in the nature of the cosmos, but in moral and religious terms, as the result of culpable creaturely unfaithful-

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ness toward a Creator (who, for Israel, is also Redeemer) and a created order that are themselves good. The third conviction, likewise apparent in all parts of the Hebrew scriptures, is that the awesome goodness of God necessarily expresses itself in awesome and unfailing opposition toward whatever mars the goodness of his handiwork. At times, the moral order itself seems thought to reject and punish those who defy it.1 But in the context of the Hebrew scriptures, it would be wrong to isolate the assertion of the moral order from the will of its Creator.2 His goodness is thought, to be sure, to demand that his judgments be just, and even that he show himself longsuffering in their execution, but never entails an obligation of tolerance toward those who scorn and disfigure what is good. In addition to these three convictions comes a fourth, found in prophetic (and apocalyptic) literature in surprising juxtaposition with outpourings of gloom and doom, yet almost demanded once involvement in history is posited of the God whose irrepressible goodness is backed up with an irresistible right arm. Such a God, inevitably, will see to it in some way that the baneful effects of creaturely unfaithfulness are one day reversed and goodness prevails, at least in the case of God’s own people, though the perspective is at times expanded, even universalized. In some way: the scripts are many, though the basic plot is a constant. Even a Jeremiah, in the midst of a national disaster fully warranted (he believed) by his people’s unfaithfulness, was sure that soil in the promised land would one day be a blessed commodity. Like the other authors of early Christian writings that found their way into our New Testament, the apostle Paul shared the four convictions listed above as well as a fifth, more specifically Christian: namely, that Jesus of Nazareth has a decisive role to play in the reversal of creation’s disorder and the ultimate triumph of God.3 Again, the scripts are many, though the basic plot is a constant. A nuanced summary of Romans would need to note how the letter addresses particular concerns and issues of the midfirst-century church. But Paul felt constrained to deal with these concerns in the context of a wide-ranging discussion of the nature and implications of the Christian gospel.4 As a result, those interpreters are not wrong who see the epistle’s theme as the triumph of God: in effect, Romans amounts to the 1 

Cf. Koch, “Vergeltungsdogma.” Cf. Boström, God of the Sages, 90–140. 3  Cf. Dunn, Unity and Diversity, 369–372; Lemcio, “Unifying Kerygma”: and note the description of “normative Christianity” in Hultgren, Rise, especially 84–103. 4 Hence, the impression, shared by many, that the summary of “the gospel” in Rom 1:16–17 is a statement of theme for the chapters that follow. The more “systematic” character of Romans is perhaps to be explained, in part, by Paul’s sense of obligation, as “apostle to the Gentiles,” to see to it that the church in Rome rightly understands the nature and implications of the Christian gospel. Cf. Jervis, Purpose, 161–164; Seifrid, Justification, 207. 2 



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Pauline script of the plot sketched above, accounting both for the disfigurement of creation and for the divine reversal of that disfigurement through Jesus Christ. A nuanced statement might also want to distinguish what is traditional and Jewish from what is Christian or even Pauline innovation. We must be content here to note that Paul traces all human sins (plural) to the fundamental sin of refusing to acknowledge God the Creator and give him his due (Rom 1:19–21, 28); that God’s wrath is seen in the abandoning of humankind to the viciousness and ugliness inherent in its rejection of God and the good (1:18–32); that the word “flesh” captures for Paul this basic human orientation of rebellion and disobedience, shared by all who are “in Adam,” and representing a departure from, a “falling short of,” the “glory” God designed for humankind (7:14–8:8; 5:12–19; 3:23); that God’s law, though providing Israel with a privileged reminder of God’s claim on human obedience and a true statement of his “holy and righteous and good” demands, can, in its encounter with rebellious “flesh,” only aggravate, not transform, the situation (2:17–18; 3:2; 5:20; 7:5–25); hence, in their transgression of the law, even the covenant people of God prove denizens of the old, Adamic order, and find themselves united with idolatrous, immoral Gentiles in the human dilemma of guilt, moral impotence, bondage to sin, and death (2:23–24; 3:19–20, 22–23; 7:5, 14–25). So far, the disfigurement. The divine triumph is achieved, the divine δικαιοσύνη demonstrated and effective (1:17; 3:21–26), in the death and resurrection of Jesus, understood both as expiating the bane of sin (3:24–25) and as making possible the translation of the old, disfigured order into a new one of righteousness, freedom, and life as believers baptized into Jesus share his “death to sin” and new “life to God” (5:12–6:11). If redemption is not yet complete, if Christian existence for the present is still tied to mortal bodies, temptations of the flesh, and sundry forms of suffering (6:12–13; 8:10, 13, 18–25, 35–36), nonetheless, the presence of the divine Spirit gives a foretaste of coming glory, and God’s demonstrated love for his people grounds a hope that cannot disappoint (8:23; 5:5–11; 8:15–17, 32). So far, the reversal of the disfigurement, though it is worth underlining Paul’s insistence, again paralleled in the prophets, that the triumph is exclusively God’s own, an expression of the divine will to redeem rather than a reflection of the merits of the redeemed (1:1, 16–17; 3:21–26, 30; 4:5; 5:6–8; 8:3–4).5 If, as Paul repeatedly insists, the result of sin 5  In the Hebrew scriptures, prayers for God’s aid for his people at times invoke their “righteousness” as a motivation for the intervention (e. g., Job 31:1–40; Ps 7:2–18 [Eng. trans., 1–17]; 26:1–12; 44:18–25 [Eng. trans., 17–24]). Still, a not uncommon motif finds the one praying declaring that no grounds can be found in the behavior of his people that would warrant action by God on their behalf – indeed, the opposite is often affirmed to be the case – but pleading nonetheless that God will find it consistent with his own goodness or mercy or faithfulness to deal favorably with his people (note especially Dan 9:4–19; also Jer 14:7–9, 19–22; Mic 7:18–20; Ps 79:8–9; 106:6–47, etc.) The motif is

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is that humanity is left without excuse before God (1:20; 2:1; cf. 3:19), he is equally insistent that, as a result of the divine triumph, humanity is left without a boast (3:27–28; 4:2; cf. 1 Cor 1:27–31; Gal 6:14). Jeremiah, who rated the human capacity to overcome its evil bent no better than leopard skills in spot-removal, would not have disagreed (Jer 13:23; 17:9; 9:22–23 [Eng. trans., 9:23–24]).6 An armchair theologian, having finished the mighty hymn that closes Romans 8, would have been loathe to reopen the discussion and risk spoiling the effect. Romans 9–11 proves once again that Paul’s thinking was incorrigibly theological, but, equally, that his theological reflections were too rooted in first-century reality to warrant the designation “armchair.” The reality for Paul was that, on the whole, his fellow-Jews had so far failed to show the “obedience of faith” requisite to participation in the divine triumph he had just portrayed. Apart from the personal anguish this caused the apostle (9:1–3; 10:1), Paul felt constrained to explain how the Christian gospel could represent a triumph for the God of Abraham in spite of appearances suggesting that the Jewish people were not on the winning side, and what this said about the divine commitment to Israel (cf. 9:6; 11:1). Paul’s explanation is two-fold. First, nothing in the present situation, disheartening though it may be, requires us to think that God has proved unfaithful to his commitment to Israel. Quite the contrary. God has never been bound to include every physical descendant of Abraham in the community of blessing. The present limiting of that community (as far as Jews are concerned) to a remnant has both precedent and prophetic sanction; at the same time, the very existence of a remnant provides evidence of God’s continuing commitment to the people of Israel. As for unbelieving Israel, its present condition may be viewed from two perspectives: on the one hand, it should be seen in the light of God’s prerogative to harden human hearts; on the other hand, Israel has proved again, this time in its response to God’s paralleled in the claim of passages like Ezek 20:5–44; 36:16–32 that Israel’s restoration owes nothing to the character or deeds of the people and everything to the divine disposition (cf. also 16:53–63; Isa 43:22–44:5; and note Deut 9:4–7). The inevitable link, in discussions of divine deliverance, between reminders of human turpitude (seen, after all, as the root cause of the dilemma from which deliverance is required) and an insistence that God’s salvific acts are rooted in his character and will alone is, of course, paralleled in Paul (e. g., Rom 3:19–24; 4:5–8; 5:6–8). Perhaps it should be said here that the point in referring to parallels from the Hebrew scriptures is not to imply direct dependence of Paul on the passages cited; rather, by way of response to those who claim that sixteenth-century spectacles are needed to interpret Paul as I do, I hope to show that the categories of thought and concern I see in Paul were natural to ancient Jews intent on affirming the ultimate triumph of God’s goodness while attributing current ills to the corruption of the human heart. 6  Cf. Thielman, Plight, 28–45.



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“righteousness” in Christ, a “disobedient and contrary people” (10:21). Still (and here we move to the second part of Paul’s answer), if the present, disheartening situation does not require us to think that God’s commitment to Israel has failed, the future will witness its faithful fulfillment. Israel’s “hardening” represents not simply a divine prerogative but, mysteriously, a part of his benevolent purpose.7 In what is essentially a Christianized restatement of the prophetic hope that, beyond the present crisis, God will one day reverse concurrently the apostasy and the fortunes of his people, Paul affirms that, when the hardening has served its purpose, Israel’s present “ungodliness” will be banished, its unbelief will be abandoned; “and so,” in the end, no mere remnant, but “Israel as a whole will be saved” (11:23, 25–26).8 Such a summary, though, I believe, correct in what it says, does leave unaddressed a number of issues critical to an understanding of this section in Romans. Detailed treatment is not possible here. The following addenda must suffice. 1. Paul’s overarching theme remains, in Romans 9–11 as in chapters 1–8, the triumph of God’s goodness in a creation corrupted by sin. But in clarifying God’s dealings with Israel in the later chapters, he shows how divine goodness “divides and conquers” Adamic humanity by dealing now with Jews, now with the Gentile nations, with the ultimate goal of showing mercy to all (11:30–32). Just as God once, to achieve his redemptive purposes, favored Israel as his people to the (temporary) exclusion of the Gentile nations, so now Israel finds itself (largely, but temporarily) excluded while Gentiles are called to salvation. Such is the divine scheme as Paul expounds it in Romans 11. But before he elaborates the larger divine agenda, he must first account for the present condition of Israel: does not the exclusion of Israel, apparent from its rejection of the gospel, entail the failure of God’s commitment to Abraham and his “seed”? 2. And, of course, for Paul the notion that the divine “word” might have failed is unthinkable (9:6). It should be noted that the “word of God” whose viability is affirmed in 9:6a must refer to the divine commitment to the Jewish people evidenced in the immediately preceding verses. That Paul’s 7 

On the nature of the divine purpose, see Donaldson, “Riches,” 92–98. current “unbelief” (11:20, 23), “ungodliness” (11:26), and “disobedience” (11:31) are clearly epitomized for Paul in its lack of response to the proclamation of God’s righteousness in Christ (10:3, 14–21). If for no other reason than that Paul sees Israel’s salvation as requiring an abandoning of its “unbelief” (11:23) and a banishing of its “ungodliness” (11:26), it is clear that he does not envisage such salvation apart from faith in Jesus Christ. Cf. Hahn, “Verständnis,” 221–236; Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 194–195; Räisänen, “Paul, God, and Israel,” 189–192; “Römer 9–11,” 2917–2918; Longenecker, “Answers,” 98–101. 8 Israel’s

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fellow-Jews, many of whom do not believe in Jesus Christ, nonetheless belong to a people that possesses divine promises has just been affirmed.9 That the lack of Christian faith on the part of many Jews throws into question the viability of the promises made to Israel is precisely the point behind the suggestion that the “word of God” might have failed. Paul’s declaration to the contrary must therefore mean that the promises made to the Jewish people remain in place.10 And the insistence that a largely unbelieving people remains the object of a valid divine commitment already contains within itself the presuppositions demanding a transformation such as that envisaged in 11:25–26. 3. In the meantime, however, how is Paul to maintain God’s faithfulness to Israel while acknowledging that few of his contemporary Jews belong to the community of God as it is presently constituted? His initial answer, in effect, is that there is nothing new in the current situation; that, on the contrary, the Israel that has enjoyed God’s favor and blessing has always been made up, not of all Abraham’s descendants, but of a selection from among them. Thus, “not all who are of Israel are Israel, nor are all the children the (promised) seed of Abraham” (9:6b–7a). And, Paul continues, if this is so, if not every physical descendant is included in the community of blessing, then it follows that what effectively constitutes the community of blessing is the divine promise to Abraham’s descendants, not physical descent per se (9:8). This, it should be noted, is not to deny that divine promises have been made to physical descendants of Abraham: in verses 3–4, Paul has just declared that his fellow-Jews “according to the flesh” are the recipients of such promises. The point of verse 8 is only to insist that God’s promise, not their physical descent, remains the basis of their entitlement and that God is therefore free to select the effective objects of the promise among the descendants.11 This claim is said to be confirmed, on the one hand, by the examples of Isaac and Jacob, whose share in the blessing of Abraham’s children is realized by their being, not simply his descendants, but descendants of whom divine promises were explicitly made; and, on the other hand, by the exclusion of Ishmael and Esau, in spite of their physical descent. The argument of these verses is thus not that the blessings promised to Abraham’s 9  Note that the antecedent of the οἵτινες (9:4) to whom the privileges (including the divine “promises”) are said to belong is Paul’s “brothers,” his “kindred according to the flesh”: those for whom he could have wished himself accursed (9:3). 10  The parallel between 9:6 and 3:3–4 should be noted. In both passages, the unbelief of “some” Jews leads to the question whether God’s faithfulness (3:3) or promise (9:6) to his people remains firm. In both, Paul asserts unequivocally that it does. But only in the later text does Paul follow up the assertion with a detailed explanation. 11  Cf. Cranfield, Romans, 2.475; Wilckens, Römer, 2.193 n. 855; Dunn, Romans 9–16, 539–540; also Munck, Christ and Israel, 35–36.



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children apply to a spiritual Israel not descended from Abraham; rather, and more to the point, such blessings are not necessarily the lot of all Abraham’s descendants, so that the contemporary exclusion of many Jews does not in itself invalidate the divine promise. 4. The principle on which Paul builds his argument is, in itself, unexceptionable Jewish theology.12 The cited examples of Ishmael and Esau are obvious enough. Jewish tradition saw many Jews as effectively excluded from the blessings promised to Israel. Mishnah Sanhedrin 10, after declaring that “All Israelites have a share in the world to come,” promptly proceeds to list a number of “Israelites” not among the “all Israelites” who possess such a share (a list, it should be noted, that includes whole generations).13 And remnant theology – by which the majority of Jews at given points in history are declared faithless and bound for judgment while the community of survivors, prior to a dramatic turning to God in the “last days,” is effectively limited to a minority of Israelites – was no Pauline innovation.14 Furthermore, this very conventional claim does represent a basis for the affirmation in 6a: the unbelief of much of contemporary Jewry does not mean that God’s commitment to Israel has failed since God’s promised blessing to Abraham’s descendants need not include every Jew, or even (the majority of) every generation of Jews. 5. It follows that we misread the truism of 9:6b if we construe it as a disenfranchisement of ethnic Israel from the divine promise, thus in effect eliminating the πάντες from both verses 6 and 7, and taking the conventional “Not all who are of Israel are Israel” to mean “Ethnic Israel has nothing to 12 

Cf. Johnson, Function, 148–149. further, that any theology by which some physical Israelites are excluded from the community of God’s blessing is bound to hold some equivalent to Paul’s claim in v. 8 that physical descent from Abraham is not, in and of itself, decisive. The belief, e. g., that though God has committed himself to ethnic Israel, even ethnic Jews must not prove apostate as the wilderness generation did if they are to enjoy divine favor, could be expressed (in a paraphrase of Paul), “It is not the physical descendants of Abraham who enjoy God’s favor, but those who show themselves faithful to God.” The “dialectic negation” (cf. Kruse, “Negation”) of such a statement is not meant as a denial that God’s favor is directed toward physical descendants of Abraham. The point is rather that, to qualify as a recipient of that favor, not only physical descent is required, but also, and as an ultimately decisive factor, faithfulness to God. A Pauline comparison is furnished by Rom 4:12, according to which ethnic (circumcised) Jews are allowed to be the children of Abraham as promised, provided that they also share Abraham’s faith. But, in a context such as that of Romans 9 in which divine sovereignty is stressed, the “dialectic negation” takes the form, “It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God but the children of the promise who are reckoned as seed” (9:8); i. e., it is the divine promise made to Abraham’s seed, not physical descent per se, that effectively constitutes the community of blessing. 14  Cf. Clements, “Remnant,” 106–121. 13  Note,

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do with spiritual Israel (apart, perhaps, from a minor, and purely coincidental, overlapping of citizens).”15 Paul’s traditional claim that the Israel of God’s blessing, though made up of Jews, is not coterminous with ethnic Israel is thus turned into a radical claim that the two are essentially unrelated entities. Not only does such a reading distort Paul’s words and argument at this point, but it ignores the preceding five verses, in which the divine covenants and promises are explicitly said to belong to Israel “according to the flesh”; and it gives “Israel” in 9:6b a “spiritual” sense that it bears nowhere else in these chapters (cf. 9:27, 31; 10:19, 21; 11:2, 7, 25–26).16 6. Paul’s initial refutation of the suggestion that the unbelief of Jews entails the failure of God’s commitment to Israel thus takes the form of a reminder that not all Jews are included in the Israel of promise. The argument then proceeds by defining more fully, and justifying, the character of God’s promissory activity: God’s election is rooted, Paul insists, in his own sovereign purpose, not in any consideration of the deeds of those he does or does not choose: “Not of works, but of him who calls” (9:12). We may well wonder why Paul introduces the latter point here.17 That he considers it significant is clear, since the verses that follow reiterate it by observing that everything depends on the will of the God who shows mercy, not on human “willing” or “running” (9:16), and defend it by insisting on God’s prerogative to show mercy or harden as he chooses (9:17–23). Certainly, Paul is not polemicizing against human beings’ doing anything, against their “willing” or “running” per se. What they do may be “good or bad” (9:11); human “willing” and “running” are not criticized, but merely declared irrelevant in the inscrutable selection of the objects of divine mercy. No doubt, we should see here a preparation for the argument of chapter 11, since belief in the ultimate triumph of God’s benevolence in spite of universal human disobedience might well be thought to require the prior conviction that God carries out his own purposes regardless of human deeds. Such was Paul’s view of humanity in the “flesh” that, were God to 15  So, e. g., Dinkler, “Historical and Eschatological Israel,” 114–117; Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles, 162–163. 16  It is true that Gentiles, formerly not God’s people, are later said to be, like Jews, the object of a divine call (9:24). But these Gentile believers are not here designated a kind of spiritual “Israel”; they are portrayed alongside the remnant of believing Jews (9:24–29) through whom God’s commitment to ethnic Israel is said to be maintained (cf. 11:1–5). Cf. Rom 15:8–12, where the “promises” made to the “forefathers” are fulfilled by Christ’s service “of the circumcision” (= Jews). Gentiles, though also given cause to glorify God, are not involved in the fulfillment of the promises made to the patriarchs here in view. Cf. also 15:27. 17  Cf. the comments of Sanday and Headlam, Romans, 243–244, on the completeness of Paul’s argument without the “new thought” of 9:11–12.



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wait for appropriate human activity to warrant the granting of his favor, he would wait in vain. But clearly there is more at stake. Some connection must exist between the ruling out of any role for human “works” in 9:12 and the claim that Israel wrongly pursues a path of “works” in 9:32. The parallel is, to be sure, not complete. In 9:11–12, it is not certain specific “works” that are excluded from consideration in God’s election; rather, by definition, no human activity18 can be a factor if God’s election is to remain rooted in his sovereign purpose alone. On the other hand, when Paul refers to the “works” wrongly pursued by Israel in 9:32, there is no doubt that he has in mind those required by the Mosaic law. But it is at least tempting to suspect that Paul introduced the exclusion of “works” (in general) in 9:12 with a view to the later claim that Israel’s pursuit of a path involving “works” was misguided. And the question is at least worth posing whether part of the thinking behind Paul’s claim that Israel’s pursuit of “works” was misguided is to be found in his reason for thinking “works” in general are excluded in 9:11–12: God achieves his purposes without reference to human activity. We will return to the question below. 7. After claiming that not every Israelite belongs to God’s Israel, that God chooses his people according to his own sovereign will, and that human activity is not a factor in the selection, Paul proceeds to argue that it is God’s prerogative to “show mercy” or “harden” as he pleases (9:14–23). Two observations are in order. First, though Paul here portrays divine activity without explicit reference to unbelieving Israel, in this context his point in speaking of divine election and hardening must be to demonstrate not only that Israel’s unbelief does not frustrate God’s purposes, but that it can be explained as an outworking of those very purposes. Clearly, while Paul denies that God’s decision to display mercy toward some while hardening others is a response to human deeds (9:11–18), he does think that the divine decision takes effect in the coming to faith of believers19 and the persistence in unbelief of others.20 That God’s role in the matter does not, for Paul, remove Israel’s responsibility for their unbelief is apparent from Ro18  Dunn

(Romans 9–16, 542) quite properly notes that the stress in 9:11 is on the exclusion of consideration for “anything” done, but fails to follow up this observation when he limits the “works” excluded in 9:12 to “works of the law” (543). Cf. Cranfield, “Works of the Law,” 97. 19  Thus, for Paul, believers are always those who have been “called” or “chosen” by God (1 Thess 1:4; 1 Cor 1:21 [“those who believe”] and 1:24 [“those who are called”]; Rom 1:6–8, etc.). 20  We may compare the Genesis story in which the cruelty of Joseph’s brothers was seen both as a genuine expression of personal hatred for which they were responsible and as an element in God’s salvific plan (Gen 37:4, 18; 42:21; 44:16; 45:5, 7–8; 50:20). Similarly, Paul saw Israel’s unbelief both as a culpable expression of the people’s inveterate

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mans 10:21 – as well, of course, as from the fact that divine sovereignty and human responsibility were traditionally held together in Jewish thought.21 Second, though Paul’s account of divine election and hardening is meant to account for the response of contemporary Israel to the gospel, it does not follow that he thought, even while writing Romans 9, that Israel was permanently excluded from the sphere of God’s blessing. His own continued prayers for Israel’s salvation (10:1) and his hope that his mission would lead to the salvation of “some” (11:13–14) show at least that he continued to envisage the possible salvation of individual Jews. And his stated conviction in 9:4–5 that God remains committed to the people of Israel implicitly demands, as we have seen, some scheme for their ultimate salvation. Nor can we read earlier affirmations in Romans about God’s redemption of Adamic humanity as conceivably allowing the designed exclusion of the Jewish people (e. g., 5:12–21). A sufficient justification for the language of election and hardening in Romans 9 is furnished by Paul’s need to show that the unbelief of contemporary Israel, far from frustrating God’s purposes, in fact finds a place within them. Romans 9 declares that the unbelief is (from one perspective) the result of divine activity and justified by the prerogatives of a Creator; it leaves to chapter 11 the elaboration of the divine purpose and scheme behind God’s “hardening” activity.22 8. The argument of Romans 11:1–10 returns to the issue raised in 9:6a. God’s commitment to Israel is again said to stand firm in spite of the current unbelief of many Jews. In 9:6–13, this is affirmed negatively: God is not bound to every physical descendant of Abraham and thus, by implication, those Jews who do not now believe need not be a part of the Israel of God’s blessing. In resistance to God’s purposes and as a designed element in the accomplishment of those purposes. 21  I. e., Paul – and other Jews – obviously believed that God is capable of sovereignly ordering the affairs of humankind in such a way that humans remain responsible for their actions. Cf. Fitzmyer, Romans, 108; Räisänen, “Paul, God, and Israel,” 186; “Römer 9–11,” 2910–2911. It is true that biblical passages that speak of God’s ordering of human affairs, if understood mechanistically and pressed to what might appear their logical conclusion, would violate the second “conviction” listed above as characteristic of the biblical writings as a whole: creaturely unfaithfulness is the cause of creation’s disorder. But this does not happen: even where divine sovereignty is most in view, a sense of humanity’s responsibility for its faithlessness toward God is retained. – That mechanical conceptions of causation are the product of the “scientific age” is argued by O’Donovan, Thirty-Nine Articles, 65–75. 22 Note that the conditional form of 9:22–23 gives the verses the force, not of an assertion that God is determined to act in the way described, but of a claim that it is his prerogative to do so (i. e., the introductory “What if …?” implies some such apodosis as “Do you then, as a mere creature, have any right to object?” Even so, the verses refer to God’s “patient bearing” of those “fitted for destruction” without speaking of (God’s prerogative to carry out) their actual destruction. Cf. Cranfield, Romans, 2.495–496.



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11:1–6, the positive point is made that those Jews who do believe, however few they may be, are enough to show that God’s commitment remains in place.23 Furthermore, unbelieving Jews are here explicitly said to be “hardened” by God. 9. That being said, Paul immediately proceeds to claim that Israel’s current “blindness” will one day be removed, its “ungodliness” will be banished, and “Israel as a whole will be saved.” Such a dénouement, though reserved for chapter 11, cannot be said to entail the retraction of all that Paul said in chapters 9 and 10. Israel was seen throughout as the recipient of the divine promise. That promise was declared to stand firm in spite of present appearances: the unbelief of some represents no failure of the promise, which did not require the blessing of every individual Jew in any case, and which is proved to remain in place by the existence of a remnant. Nor does the ultimate, blessed dénouement render pointless Paul’s anguish over the recalcitrance of contemporary Israel any more than the sanguine hopes of prophets of old kept them from lamenting the behavior and fate of their fellowcountrymen. If Paul’s account of contemporary Israel’s unbelief in chapters 9 and 10 did not declare their unbelief to be permanent, it is also true that his expectation of a divine intervention on behalf of “Israel as a whole” does not require that each individual Israelite would share in the blessing.24 In addition to the obvious parallel in m. Sanhedrin 10:1–4, we might compare Ezekiel 20:33–44, where the prophet, though expressing the common prophetic hope that God will one day intervene to end the apostasy of contemporary Israel and bless them with his favor, nonetheless speaks of persistent rebels who will be excluded from the land (20:38).25 10. In short, Paul presupposes throughout these chapters that God is committed to the blessing of (ethnic) Israel. He believes (with Jews before and after him) that that commitment does not require the blessing of every individual Israelite – or, indeed, of whole generations of Israelites. He is convinced that the unbelief of much of contemporary Israel places them, for the moment at least, outside the sphere of divine blessing. His statements in chapter 11 to the effect that an abandoning of unbelief will one day take place on the part of πᾶς  Ἰσραήλ merely represents the final, glorious fulfillment of a promise that Paul affirms as still in place in chapters 9 and 23  The notion of a remnant was introduced already in 9:27–29; it is here given positive significance. 24  Cf. Holtz, “Judgment,” 288–293. The point of affirming salvation for πᾶς Ἰσραήλ lies not in declaring the destiny of each individual Jew, but in declaring that, though at present only a remnant believes and a (large) “part” of Israel has been hardened (11:1–7, 25), in the future, Israel as a whole will be saved. 25  Cf. also Ezek 11:21, in the context of 11:17–21.

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10 without setting aside the affirmation of those earlier chapters that those who resist the “righteousness of God” must not be thought to frustrate the fulfillment of God’s word. We turn now to consider the passage within these chapters in which Paul speaks about the law (9:30–10:13). Though he sums up his own larger argument in the words “God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all” (11:32), it must be conceded that Paul does not consider Gentile disobedience to require further demonstration. Romans 9:6–29, taken together with 11:1–10, treats God’s role in the consignment of Israel to disobedience, whereas 9:30–10:21 explains wherein Israel’s disobedience lay. It is in this latter section that the subject of the law is introduced. The opening “What shall we say then?” (9:30) suggests that the consideration or dilemma about to be stated is rooted in something that has just been said.26 The immediately preceding verses make the claim that Gentiles, formerly “not [God’s] people,” are now among the “vessels of [his] mercy,” joining a mere remnant of Israel. This development is now given paradoxical expression: “Gentiles not pursuing righteousness have obtained righteousness, that is, the righteousness based on faith. But Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not attain to the law.” In both cases, the relation between human “pursuit” and attainment is declared, with deliberate paradox, to be negative. What is the point behind the paradox? In the case of Gentile Christians, Paul is saying that, while they had not pursued good standing with God by meeting his demands for right behavior, they had obtained such standing by faith (in Christ). Israel, conversely, though intently pursuing a law that offered good relations with God, failed to reach the goal of that law. That goal could only be attained, Paul declares, not by “works,” but by “faith” (in Christ) (9:32). Their refusal to “believe in him” (9:33) proves to be their downfall. Christ is the “stone” on which they “stumbled,” their “rock of offense.” So much is clear. But if we conclude that that is all that Paul is saying, then we reduce the programmatic paradox of 9:30–31 to a mere curiosity; we fail to see the relation between the exclusion of “works” in 9:12 and that in 9:32; and we fail to see the point of the contrast between the “righteousness of the law” and that “of faith” in 10:5–13. 1. The first-century reality confronting Paul was that Gentiles were filling an increasing number of church pews while the Jews as a whole remained outside. To that reality, Paul gives careful and programmatic formulation in a paradox meant to convey, like other Pauline paradoxes, the unfathomable ways of the Almighty, who chooses to make something of human nothings 26 

Cf. 4:1; 6:1; 7:7; 8:31; 9:14; and note 3:1, 9.



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while persistently bringing to nothing whatever, humanly speaking, promises to be something. The same God who “has made foolish the wisdom of the world,” who has “chosen the weak things of the world to shame the strong,” the “things that are not to bring to nought the things that are” (1 Cor 1:20, 27–28; cf. 2 Cor 4:10–11; 12:9–10; Rom 4:17), has purposed, according to our passage, to grant righteousness to those who did not pursue it – while those who did, fall short. The point of the passage is not simply that righteousness is found in Christ, not Moses, so that Gentiles who pursued it in Christ obtained it while Jews who pursued it in Moses did not. That is not the stuff of paradox, nor does it correspond to Paul’s language. It is not that Israel is found to be “barking up the wrong tree,” but that the prey is granted, paradoxically, not to the zealous “barkers” but to the indifferent passersby. The relation between human “pursuit” and the obtaining of divine favor is affirmed, paradoxically but necessarily, to be negative. 27 The programmatic nature of the paradox is further apparent from the repetition of its first half (9:30) in 10:20, of its second half (9:31) in 11:7. 2. The paradox is prefaced, as noted above, with “What shall we say then?” It must, in other words, bear some relation to the preceding argument. And so it does, when given its proper force. After initially claiming that true Israel is defined by the divine call, Paul devotes the next stage of his argument to an insistence that that call has its roots solely in the divine purpose, repeatedly excluding any consideration of human activity, and insisting on God’s prerogative to deal with his creatures as he chooses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (9:15; cf. v. 18). If that is borne in mind, it should come as no surprise (though the formulation is pointedly paradoxical) to learn that human “pursuit” bears no relation to the obtaining of divine favor.28 That Gentiles indifferent to relations with Israel’s God have obtained standing with him by faith (9:30) illustrates perfectly the independence of God’s call from any consideration of human “works” (9:11–12). Conversely, we should not be surprised to learn that Israel’s pursuit of a path to righteousness involving their performance of “works” is thought misguided. To be sure, the 27 

Cf. Gordon, “Torah-Righteousness,” 165. Note that the same metaphor of a race with its goal lies behind the (fruitless) “running” in 9:16 and the (fruitless) “pursuing” in 9:30–31. – It should be added that Paul does not appear to be criticizing the notion of a “pursuit” per se, any more than 9:12 is an attack on “works” or 1 Cor 1:26–29 is an attack on the “strong” or the “nobly born.” He does observe that human “running” (9:16) and “pursuit” (9:31), like human strength and noble birth, are not factors when God constitutes his people – indeed, God is pleased to make his own those with no such apparent credentials. Of course, a “pursuit” of “works” accompanied by a refusal to “submit to God’s righteousness” based on “faith” is seen as culpable (9:32; 10:3, 18–21). 28 

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“works” pursued by Israel are not just any “works,” but those prescribed by the Mosaic law; but nothing in this passage suggests that Israel pursues the wrong kind of “works.”29 What is emphatically excluded is consideration of any human “work” in the granting of divine favor (9:12): an exclusion that naturally includes the particular “works” enjoined by Moses.30 This relation between the exclusion of “works” in 9:12 and that in 9:32 is confirmed by the third occurrence of the phrase in 11:5–7. If Israel as a whole has failed to submit to God’s righteousness (so 10:3), a “remnant” at least has found it. But, Paul insists, in the nature of the case, it is a remnant “according to an election of grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer by works, for otherwise grace would no longer be grace. What then? What Israel seeks, it did not attain, but the election [of grace] attained it.” Here the “works” that are excluded as a factor in the “election” of the “remnant” are clearly the “works” that a “remnant” of Israelites might be expected to perform, and those that (hardened) “Israel” did attempt to carry out in the fruitless “search” of 11:7; like those in 9:32, they are the “works” prescribed by the Mosaic law. But Paul’s reason for excluding them in 11:6, and, hence, the reason why he thinks their pursuit is bound to fail (11:1–7), is that of 9:11–12: any consideration of human “works” is incompatible by definition with divine election, which is necessarily rooted in God’s purposes and grace alone. The remnant owe their place in God’s favor to divine election (11:5, 7); the election is one of divine “grace” (11:5); an election of “grace” operates without reference to human works (11:6); therefore, Israel’s “search,” necessarily involving works (cf. 9:31–32), can only lead to failure. To repeat: the “works” in view may be those demanded by the law given to Israel; but it is not because of the kind of works they are or even because of the spirit (e. g., of self-righteousness or self-assertion or national pride) with which they are done that they are excluded, but because the assigning of a role to human works of any kind would mean that God’s purposes were not being achieved through his own gracious election: and it is through gracious election, which programmatically excludes consideration of human endeavor, that God has determined to act. 3. Paul thus sees Israel’s pursuit of righteousness through the fulfillment of the law’s “works” as a doomed enterprise, in part at least because it is at 29 

Cf. Johnson, Function, 155. Cf. Moo, “Law,” 94–97. In fact, as we have seen, the whole passage (9:6–23), while preparing for the claim that God has hardened Israel in 11:7–10, does so by treating in general terms God’s mode of operation: he shows mercy and hardens according to his own sovereign purposes without regard to the “works” of people. In such a general treatment (in which Paul prepares for claims specifically about Israel), it is natural that “works” in general are discounted (as preparation for the claim that Israel’s “works” in seeking to comply with the Mosaic law cannot secure status with God). 30 



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cross-purposes with the divine modus operandi of granting favor by grace alone. It follows that Paul must depict the “righteousness of faith” in such a way as to show that it, unlike Israel’s pursuit of righteousness through the law, is consistent with the free operation of divine grace. Such a depiction of faith has, of course, already been offered in Romans 4. In what is essentially another statement of the principle of 9:11–12; 11:6, we are told in 4:4 that what is granted to “the one who works (τῷ δὲ ἐργαζομένῳ)” cannot be awarded “by grace (κατὰ χάριν),” but must be reckoned as such a person’s “due.” On the other hand, divine grace is operative in the case of one who “does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly” (4:5). The juxtaposition of μὴ ἐργαζομένῳ with πιστεύοντι in this context has the force, not simply of denying that the believer need perform the particular works enjoined in the law, but of characterizing faith in God as compatible with – indeed, as finding its essence in – an abandoning of the thought that one might contribute anything to the process of “justification” and receiving it from the God in whom one believes as a gift of “grace” – as, indeed, it must be when those declared righteous are the “ungodly” (4:5).31 Such faith, Paul declares, was shown by Abraham, who in this respect is the prototype of Christian believers. Why, we may wonder, does Paul not consider such “faith” itself as a human contribution to the process of justification? The answer is apparent. Paul’s point is not that Abraham or Christians are people characterized by a human attitude called “faith”; rather, as admiration is evoked by beauty, so “faith” is thought of by Paul as necessarily a response elicited by the proclamation of what God has done (so in the case of Christian faith) or (as in the case of Abraham; cf. Rom 4:18–22) what he is about to do: “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (10:17).32 Indeed, in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, the “word of God” is thought to actively effect the response of faith; and it is apparent everywhere that Paul believes God’s “call” or “election” is the necessary precondition of Christian faith.33 As a trust in God evoked – even created – 31  As noted above, there is an inevitable link, in Paul as in the Hebrew scriptures, between the insistence on human sinfulness and the gratuity of divine salvation (cf. Rom 3:23–24; 5:15–17; 2 Cor 5:18–6:1). 32  For faith as a response to proclamation, cf. also 1 Cor 2:4–5; 15:11, 14; Gal 3:2,5. “Darum ist der Glaube nicht das Mittel, das der Mensch anwenden muss, um gerechtfertigt zu werden. Er ist nicht die subjektive Voraussetzung für das Heilsgeschehen, sondern die Konsequenz des am Menschen erfolgten Tuns Gottes. Er ermöglicht nicht das Wirken Gottes, sondern das Wirken Gottes ermöglicht den Glauben des Menschen. Darum kann der Glaube nicht die Bedingung sein, die der Mensch erfüllen muß, wenn er errettet werden will, sondern die Verkündigung von dem durch Gott den Menschen in Christus bereiteten Heil ist die Bedingung für die Ermöglichung des Glaubens” (Friedrich, “Glaube,” 109–110). Cf. also Hofius, “Wort Gottes und Glaube,” 379–408. 33  See n. 19 above. Cf. 2 Cor 4:6, where the divine illumination that results in faith is

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by the proclamation that God himself, of his own initiative and grace, has done (or will do) all that is necessary, “faith” is thought compatible with the complete gratuity of God’s salvific activity,34 whereas the regarding of his blessing as in any way contingent on the independent performance of human “works” is not. A similar understanding of faith is implicit in 9:30–32. After insisting that God “calls” people without reference to their works (9:6–23), Paul notes that good standing with God is obtained by “faith” on the part of those who do not “pursue” it, while Jews involved in the pursuit miss the path of faith (9:30–32). The faith in question is obviously, and necessarily, faith in Christ: faith has for Paul the character of response, and saving faith is response to the proclamation of God’s salvation in Christ. Christ is the “stone” over which Jews “stumble” through unbelief; he is the agent of God’s righteousness. But in this passage, as in Romans 4, it is part of the essence of faith in Christ that it accepts the “gift” (so Rom 5:17; cf. 3:24) of righteousness from God apart from human “pursuit” in a way compatible with God’s eternal purpose of constituting his people through his call and grace alone.35 Finally, when the “righteousness of the law” is contrasted with that “of faith” in 10:5–13, the point of the contrast is the same. The law requires “doing”36 as the path to life: “the one who does these things will live by them.” The righteousness of faith, by contrast, is immediately distanced from human endeavor. After all, no human can have any part in bringing Christ down from heaven or in bringing him back from the dead (10:6–7). No, the path of faith has been made accessible to people, brought “near” to them (10:8), without their pursuing it; it has been “put at their fingertips,” we might say, though Deuteronomy’s “in your mouth and in your heart” (Deut 30:14, cited in 10:8)37 allows the desired connection to the oral concompared with the creation of light in Gen 1:3. Paul’s own “Damascus” experience was, he would have believed, precisely of that character, and forbade his assuming any credit for his own coming to “faith.” 34  Note that Phil 1:29 sees “faith” itself as a gift of God’s grace. The compatibility of faith and grace in Paul’s thought is also apparent in Gal 5:4–5; Rom 3:21–30; 5:1–2; and especially 4:16: διὰ τοῦτο ἐκ πίστεως, ἵνα κατὰ χάριν … Cf. also the classic statement in Eph 2:8–9. On the relationship between grace and faith in Paul, see Doughty, “Priority.” 35  Cf. Laato, Paulus und das Judentum, 250–251 for the insistence that the “christological” explanation of Israel’s shortcoming in 9:30–10:3 complements rather than rules out an “anthropological” explanation. 36  The essence of the “righteousness of the law” according to 10:5 must be found in the words ὁ ποιήσας, since it can hardly rest in the unspecified αὐτά/αὐτοῖς – even apart from the self-evident fact that the whole point of a commandment is that it be done. 37 An incidental confirmation that Paul’s point here is that the “righteousness of faith” does not involve human endeavor is provided by the omission, in Paul’s quotation



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fession that Jesus is Lord and the inner conviction that God raised him from the dead.38 It appears, then, that the argument of these chapters requires us to see in Israel’s misguided pursuit of “works” rather than “faith” not simply a zealous but ethnocentric pursuit of its own, particularistic path to righteousness, but a failure to perceive that God’s favor in Christ is bestowed gratuitously, not in recognition of human endeavor, and that it can be enjoyed only by those who respond to the gift with faith. Similarly, in 10:3, Jews’ attempt to establish “their own righteousness” rather than submit to God’s righteousness means more than that they adhered to a covenant that embraced their own nation in a peculiar way rather than the divine righteousness that embraces all peoples on identical terms.39 Unless we are to isolate completely Paul’s explanation of Israel’s misunderstanding in 9:32 from his statement of their ignorance in 10:3, the latter claim, too, must mean that they attribute to their “own,” human endeavors to fulfill God’s demands a significance that the “righteousness of God” will not allow. It remains to address Paul’s perception of the role played by the Mosaic law in Israel’s purported misunderstanding. According to 9:31, Israel’s “pursuit” has “the law of righteousness” as its goal. The Mosaic code is certainly intended. That it is defined by the genitive δικαιοσύνης perhaps reflects Paul’s earlier affirmation that its commands are “righteous” (7:12); in any case, since Paul can speak of the “righteousness based on the law” in 10:5, the “law of righteousness” (9:31) must refer to the law that spells out a path to righteousness in the terms, “The one who does these things will live by them” (10:5, citing Lev 18:5). But a path described in these terms is being contrasted with the path of faith40 whereby divine salvation of Deut 30:14, of the notion that the word is “near … to do it” (LXX αὐτὸ ποιεῖν). Cf. Rhyne, “Meaning,” 496–497; Johnson, Function, 158. 38  On the appropriateness of using this passage in Deuteronomy as a characterization of the “righteousness of faith,” see Dunn, “Righteousness from the Law,” 216–228. 39  So, e. g., Wright, Climax, 241; Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 38. But Jews’ “own righteousness,” contrasted with that of God in Rom 10:3, can hardly be different from Paul’s own righteousness, contrasted with that from God in Phil 3:9; and Paul’s own righteousness must be based upon his own observance of the law (Phil 3:6). 40  That the “righteousness of faith” in 10:6–13 is contrasted, not identified, with the “righteousness of the law” in 10:5 is all but demanded by the structure of 10:5–6: “When Paul sets righteousness ἐκ πίστεως alongside righteousness ἐκ something else, with δέ as the linking word, he obviously intends his readers to understand a contrast between the two phrases” (Dunn, Romans 9–16, 602). Such an interpretation is confirmed by (i) the contrast elsewhere in Romans of the law and its “works” with faith (e. g., 3:21–22, 28; 4:13, 14, 16); (ii) the parallel contrast of the same two “righteousnesses” in Phil 3:9; (iii) the use in Gal 3:12 of the same Leviticus text cited in Rom 10:5 to establish that “the law is not of faith.” To suggest that Paul identifies the “righteousness of the law” in Rom 10:5 with that of “faith” in 10:6 thus requires us to believe “that, whereas he quotes Lev. 18:5, without elaborating on it, as a self-evident demonstration that ‘the law does not rest on

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is made available apart from human endeavor (10:6–13); the essence of the “righteousness of the law” is thus portrayed in 10:5 as its demand for deeds in compliance with its prescriptions (cf. 2:13). Hence, Israel’s pursuit of the “law of righteousness” can only refer to Israel’s efforts at securing their good standing with God by proving faithful to the prescriptions of the law God gave them – and that can hardly have been the wrong thing to do! And yet, Paul claims, the efforts have proved fruitless (9:31b) – indeed, they are misguided (9:32). How does Paul envisage the shortcomings of Israel’s “pursuit”? It would be wrong to forget at this point all that Paul has said in the first eight chapters of the epistle. Israel was given the law, but because of their transgressions, they have been left standing, with Gentiles, culpable before God (Romans 2–3). The law’s demands may be “holy and righteous and good,” but when they encounter a “flesh” that is rebellious against God, they can only aggravate the rebellion (Romans 7). The mindset of the “flesh” is at enmity with God; it does not, and cannot, submit to his law (8:7). In these chapters, Paul provides an “anthropological” explanation for the self-critical tradition by which Israel viewed its past as a litany of stubborn, stiff-necked rebellion in the face of divine favor. Given his support for that tradition, it is obvious that Paul did not think Israel had ever measured up to the law. The law’s promise of life (2:13; 10:5; cf. 7:10) had been frustrated by its “weakness,” its inability to overcome the “flesh” (8:3). Israel’s transgressions of the law are seen as keeping them from securing the good standing with God promised to them as his people if they complied with his commands. When the law and Israel’s history under its regime are regarded in these terms, then it is clear that the coming of Christ and his death “for our sins” must be thought to mark a divinely declared and emphatic end (τέλος) to the possibility, proclaimed in the law itself, that righteousness could be secured through its “works” (10:4–5; cf. 3:20–22).41 faith’ in Gal. 3:12, he quotes the same verse, without elaboration, as a self-evident demonstration that the law does rest on faith in Rom. 10:5” (Westerholm, Israel’s Law, 128). Cf. also Vos, “Antinomie,” 258–260. 41 That τέλος in 10:4 can mean “end” has been amply demonstrated by Dunn, Romans 9–16, 589–591; Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 53–56. That the Sinaitic covenant and, with it, the Mosaic law, though divinely given and glorious, have now served their divine purpose and are (at least for those in Christ) no longer valid is, I believe, maintained consistently by Paul, who contrasts not only the “old” covenant with the “new,” but also the time (and path) of the “law” with that of “faith” (cf. 2 Cor 3:6–14; Gal 3:19–25; Rom 3:21–22; 7:6). Rom 3:31 perhaps refers to the law as a witness to the “righteousness of faith” (cf. 3:21); or it may simply be an affirmation that Paul rather than his opponents proclaims what God really intended in giving the law (cf. 3:20; 4:15; 5:20) and in that sense he “establishes” it. The ending of the (temporary) institution of the Sinaitic covenant does not, however, mean for Paul the setting aside of God’s prior promise to Abraham and his



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So much seems clear. Curiously, however, in spite of his agreement in 10:5 (and elsewhere) that the law demands “works,” Paul declares in 9:32 that Israel’s attempts to measure up to the law by means of its “works” are misguided; only by faith can their goal be achieved. How are we to understand the latter claim? In fact, of course, the Christian Paul could not believe that God had ever intended the law to serve as the true path to righteousness (cf. Gal 3:21). Such a divine intention would reduce Christ to God’s “Plan B,” a notion unacceptable both for its displacement of the centrality of Christ and for its implication that God’s “Plan A” had met with unexpected failure. Moreover, the notion that God could ever recognize human deeds in compliance with the law as a factor in securing his favor would run counter to Paul’s depiction of the divine mode of operation in 9:6–23. In God’s plan, then, the law must have been intended to serve some role preparatory to the revelation of his righteousness in Christ. God’s design for the law must have been, in part, to go on record as demanding what is “holy and righteous and good,” but also (indeed, even more) to demonstrate the rebellious character of humanity in Adam through the shortcomings of the most privileged segment of Adamic humanity (3:19–20). Paradoxically, then, the righteousness demanded by the law can only be attained apart from the law, by faith in Christ (3:21–22). But since the law had a divine role to play until Christ came, since it demonstrated the culpability of humanity from which Christ brought deliverance, it can be said to have been pointing all along to Christ. And given Paul’s use of the metaphor of a race for Israel’s “pursuit” of the “law of righteousness,” it is just possible that, with τέλος in 10:4, Paul intends to designate Christ as the “goal” as well as the “end” of the law’s promise of righteousness to those who keep its demands.42 Finally, since the law’s true purpose is found, not in the impossible fulfillment of its demands by the “flesh,” but in preparing the path to faith, Israel can only measure up to the law itself, not by “works,” but “by faith” (9:31–32). But what, we may ask in conclusion, induced Paul to contrast “faith” and “works” in this way, and to portray non-Christian Jews in a fruitless pursuit of righteousness through “works”?43 And why did he not see his own insistence on proper Christian behavior as subject to the same condemnation of “works”? “seed” – though only in Romans does he insist that the historical people of Israel constituted by the promise remains its effective object. 42  Where a Greek term or phrase appearing in different contexts must be rendered in quite different ways in English, it is normally unwise to suggest that the term or phrase can have both meanings in a single context. But “goal” and “end” are not necessarily unrelated meanings. Cf. Barrett, Essays, 146–147. 43  On this matter, see the helpful comments of Räisänen, “Bruch,” 169–171.

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For the Christian Paul, reflecting on humanity’s (now self-evident) need of redemption through a crucified and resurrected Messiah, it seemed clear that God’s decisive salvific intervention could not possibly be one that left untransformed the character of human “flesh.” And however privileged Israelites had been, and however much they owed their favored status to God’s grace and redemption, the record of their history in sacred Scripture demonstrated that they remained “flesh”;44 their redemption from Egypt and the subsequent gift of the law had not altered Israel’s all too human recalcitrance toward God and his will.45 The picture is not altered if we insist that Israel’s efforts at fulfilling the law were merely required to maintain a standing with God granted by divine favor, or that nothing more than a modicum of intended obedience was demanded. If “flesh” is defined by its fundamental hostility toward God, good standing with God can neither be gained nor maintained by a path that requires any such “works” of “flesh” (cf. Rom 8:7–8). What is required is a new order of humanity; a second, but obedient, Adam; a new creation or, if you will, the redemption of the old. In any case, these are all job descriptions such that no human need apply, even for an assistant’s role. But, of course, for Paul, God has acted, and there is a new creation for those who are in Christ; a second, obedient Adam has overcome the dilemma created by the disobedience of the first. And it is all, Paul insists, God’s doing. To be sure, the proclamation of what God has done should evoke trust in those who hear it, as beauty evokes admiration. Without such faith, humanity remains in its “fleshly” refusal to acknowledge God and give him his due. But the transformation (6:1–11), the reconciliation of God’s enemies (5:6–11), and the justification of the ungodly (3:21–26; 4:5) are all God’s doing: both Paul’s depiction of the human dilemma and a religious vision, like Isaiah’s, that sees God as the only effective Actor on the stage of history and the only worthy recipient of praise,46 led Paul to this insistence. That being said, Paul shares, in addition to the five I have listed, a sixth conviction with the other early Christian authors represented in our New Testament: the divine transformation achieved in Jesus Christ must have 44  Cf. Phil 3:3–6, in which the privileges and practices of Judaism are considered to belong to the realm of the “flesh”; also the insistence in Gal 3:3 that for Gentile believers to be circumcised would mean returning to the realm of the “flesh”; and, of course, Rom 7:14–25; 8:3. It is not without significance that Paul claims no σάρξ can be “justified by the works of the law” (Gal 2:16; Rom 3:20; cf. Thielman, Plight, 63–65). 45  Again, the notion that Israel’s untransformed recalcitrance proved disastrous for its relation with God in terms of the Sinaitic covenant, though exploited by Paul, was hardly a Pauline innovation; it is thematic, e. g., in the Deuteronomistic History, as in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. 46  Rom 9:6–29; 11:25–36; 1 Cor 1:18–31. Cf. Isa 2:11, 17, 22; 29:14–16; 31:3, etc.



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moral consequences in the lives of his followers.47 Only God can transform the “flesh” – but a transformation is, necessarily, a transformation: if service of God and of righteousness does not mark the citizens of the new age, then how does it differ from the old? Paul does not hesitate to demand righteous behavior of Christians – though it is worth noting that he frequently qualifies statements of Christian activity with reminders that the true agent is the divine Spirit within.48 If righteous, God-pleasing behavior is only possible by those whom God has translated into a new order of humanity and in whom God’s Spirit (or Christ, or the Spirit of Christ) resides, such deeds are themselves an effect, an expression, of God’s transforming grace (1 Cor 15:10; 2 Cor 1:12; 12:9; cf. Phil 1:6; 2:13); necessary, to be sure, but hardly subject to the exclusion of human “works” intended to ensure that no “fleshly” endeavor is given a role in the securing of divine favor. The “works” that Paul discounts are those of the unredeemed “flesh”; the righteous behavior that he requires is the “fruit” of the Spirit borne in those who have responded to God’s demonstration of righteousness with faith.

Conclusions Recent scholarship is correct in its insistence that first-century Judaism must be understood in its own terms; and Sanders’s “covenantal nomism”49 finely captures the essence of at least much of the first-century Jewish religious scene. We do not, however, do full justice to Paul’s argument in Romans 9:30–10:13 (and elsewhere) when we confine Paul’s perception of the shortcomings of (non-Christian) Jewish religiosity to christological obtuseness or nationalistic particularism. Jewish convictions about God’s goodness and sovereignty over the affairs of humankind found expression long before Paul in the notions that God accomplishes his (ultimately benevolent) purposes independently of human designs or activity and that, given the recalcitrance of the human heart, divine deliverance must be rooted in divine goodness and faithfulness, not in the merits of the delivered. Such notions are the very pith of the Pauline gospel and, at the same time, a crucial element in his argument in Romans that “flesh” cannot be “justified” by human observance of the law. To deny Paul’s contrast between faith and works, or to confine its scope to a polemic against Jewish particularism, is thus to fail to appreciate both the theocentric focus of Paul’s religious view and the radicalness with which he views the human dilemma and divine 47 

Cf. Hultgren, Rise, 95–97. Rom 8:9, 13–14; Gal 5:18, 22, 25; cf. Rom 15:18; Gal 2:20; Phil 2:13. 49 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 75, 426–428. 48 

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redemption. On the one hand, God must be the one “from whom, through whom, and for whom are all things” (Rom 11:36). On the other, “flesh” cannot be made good by giving it commands to keep, however righteous those demands in themselves might be. The old, corrupted order must give way to that of righteousness. Such was the divine triumph accomplished in Christ. Or so, at least, runs the radical Pauline script of the sanguine prophetic hope for divine renewal. Bibliography Barrett, C. K. Essays on Paul. London: SPCK, 1982. Boström, Lennart. The God of the Sages: The Portrayal of God in the Book of Proverbs. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1990. Clements, Ronald E. “‘A Remnant Chosen by Grace’ (Romans 11:5): The Old Testament Background and Origin of the Remnant Concept.” In Pauline Studies, edited by Donald A. Hagner and Murray J. Harris. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980, 106–121. Cranfield, C. E. B. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Vols. 1–2. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975–1979. – “‘The Works of the Law’ in the Epistle to the Romans.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 43 (1991): 89–101. Dinkler, Erich. “The Historical and the Eschatological Israel in Romans Chapters 9–11: A Contribution to the Problem of Predestination and Individual Responsibility.” Journal of Religion 36 (1956): 109–127. Donaldson, Terence L. “‘Riches for the Gentiles’ (Rom 11:12): Israel’s Rejection and Paul’s Gentile Mission.” Journal of Biblical Literature 112 (1993): 81–98. Doughty, Darrel J. “The Priority of ΧΑΡΙΣ.” New Testament Studies 19 (1972–1973): 163–180. Dunn, James D. G. “‘Righteousness from the Law’ and ‘Righteousness from Faith’: Paul’s Interpretation of Scripture in Romans 10:1–10.” In Tradition and Interpretation in the New Testament, edited by Gerald F. Hawthorne and Otto Betz. Tübingen: Mohr, 1987, 216–228. – Romans 9–16. Dallas: Word, 1988. – Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977. – “Yet Once More – ‘The Works of the Law’: A Response.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 46 (1992): 99–117. Fitzmyer, Joseph A. Romans. New York: Doubleday, 1993. Friedrich, Gerhard. “Glaube und Verkündigung bei Paulus.” In Glaube im Neuen Testament, edited by Ferdinand Hahn and Hans Klein. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982, 91–113. Gordon, T. David. “Why Israel Did Not Obtain Torah-Righteousness: A Translation Note on Rom 9:32.” Westminster Theological Journal 54 (1992): 163–166. Hahn, Ferdinand. “Zum Verständnis von Römer 11.26a: ‘… und so wird ganz Israel gerettet werden.’” In Paul and Paulinism, edited by M. D. Hooker and S. G. Wilson. London: SPCK, 1982, 221–236.



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Hofius, Otfried. “Wort Gottes und Glaube bei Paulus.” In Paulus und das antike Judentum, edited by Martin Hengel and Ulrich Heckel. Tübingen: Mohr, 1991, 379–408. Holtz, Traugott. “The Judgment on the Jews and the Salvation of All Israel: 1 Thes 2,15–16 and Rom 11, 25–26.” Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium 87 (1990): 284–294. Hultgren, Arland. The Rise of Normative Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994. Jervis, L. Ann. The Purpose of Romans: A Comparative Letter Structure Investigation. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1991. Johnson, E. Elizabeth. The Function of Apocalyptic and Wisdom Traditions in Romans 9–11. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989. Koch, Klaus. “Gibt es ein Vergeltungsdogma im Alten Testament?” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 52 (1955): 1–42. Kruse, H. “Die ‘dialektische Negation’ als semitischen Idiom.” Vetus Testamentum 4 (1954): 385–400. Laato, Timo. Paulus und das Judentum: Anthropologische Erwägungen. Åbo: Åbo Academy Press, 1991. Lemcio, E. E. “The Unifying Kerygma of the New Testament, I and II.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33 (1988): 3–17, and 38 (1990): 3–11. Longenecker, Bruce W. “Different Answers to Different Issues: Israel, the Gentiles and Salvation History in Romans 9–11.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36 (1989): 95–123. Moo, Douglas J. “‘Law,’ ‘Works of the Law,’ and Legalism in Paul.” Westminster Theological Journal 45 (1983): 73–100. Munck, Johannes. Christ and Israel: An Interpretation of Romans 9–11. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967. O’Donovan, Oliver. On the Thirty-Nine Articles: A Conversation with Tudor Christianity. Carlisle: Paternoster, 1986. Räisänen, Heikki. “Der Bruch des Paulus mit Israels Bund.” In The Law in the Bible and in its Environment, edited by Timo Veijola. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990, 156–172. – Paul and the Law. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983. – “Paul, God, and Israel: Romans 9–11 in Recent Research.” In The Social World of Formative Christianity and Judaism, edited by Jacob Neusner, Peder Borgen, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Richard Horsley. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988, 178–206. – “Römer 9–11: Analyse eines geistigen Ringens.” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.25.4 (1987): 2891–2939. Rhyne, C. Thomas. “Nomos Dikaiosynes and the Meaning of Romans 10:4.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 47 (1985): 486–499. Sanday, William, and Arthur C. Headlam. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1902. Sanders, E. P. Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977. – Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983. Seifrid, Mark A. Justification by Faith: The Origin and Development of a Central Pauline Theme. Leiden: Brill, 1992. Thielman, Frank. From Plight to Solution: A Jewish Framework for Understanding Paul’s View of the Law in Galatians and Romans. Leiden: Brill, 1989. Vos, J. S. “Die hermeneutische Antinomie bei Paulus (Galater 3.11–12; Römer 10.5– 10).” New Testament Studies 38 (1992): 254–270.

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Watson, Francis. Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Westerholm, Stephen. Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988. Wilckens, Ulrich. Der Brief an die Römer. Vol. 2. Cologne: Benziger; NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1980. Wright, N. T. The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992.

Chapter 15

On Fulfilling the Whole Law (Gal 5:14)1 In his famous essay on “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson claimed that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”;2 recent studies on Paul and the law seem bent on proving that the apostle at least was never so afflicted. John Drane3 and Hans Hübner4 have each contributed monographs in which they maintain that Paul’s thinking on the law underwent dramatic shifts between the writing of Galatians and that of Romans. The proposal worked out in E. P. Sanders’s Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People allows for a measure of coherence in Paul’s thought but not for logical consistency: “the different things which Paul said about the law depend on the question asked or the problem posed”; and while “each answer has its own logic and springs from one of his central concerns … the diverse answers, when set alongside one another, do not form a logical whole.”5 Heikki Räisänen, in stating his thesis, dispenses with such nuances: “contradictions and tensions have to be accepted as constant features of Paul’s theology of the law”; they should be taken “very seriously as pointers to Paul’s personal theological problems.”6 Paul’s guideline, it seems, could well have been the advice of Emerson: “Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.”7 Here we must limit our attention to one of the issues on which Paul has been said to speak with two minds. I quote Räisänen: “Paul states in unambiguous terms that the law has been abolished. … The abolition notwithstanding, Paul also makes positive statements which imply that the law is still valid. The claim it justly puts on men is fulfilled by Christians.”8 Such is the problem in general terms. The dilemma can, however, be focused more sharply and in exegetical terms by simply asking how Galatians 5:14 1  This article is dedicated, with my profound appreciation and admiration, to my doctoral supervisor, Professor Birger Gerhardsson. 2 Emerson, Works, 33. 3 Drane, Paul. 4 Hübner, Law. 5 Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 4. 6 Räisänen, Law, 11–12. 7 Emerson, Works, 33. 8 Räisänen, Law, 199.

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relates to the rest of the epistle. Throughout Galatians, Paul adamantly declares that believers are free from the law and must so remain. According to Galatians 5:3, the Galatian Christians, should they become circumcised, would thereby incur an obligation to do the whole law; the implication is surely that, as uncircumcised believers, they are subject to no such obligation. In Galatians 5:12, Paul pens what remain his fiercest words against those promoting a life “under the law.” In Galatians 5:13, he repeats his thesis: “You were called to freedom.” Yet it is essentially Galatians 5:14 that (with its parallel passages, Rom 8:4; 13:8–10) forms the basis for the view that the law somehow remains valid and binding for Christians.9 The whole problem may thus be summed up in one word, namely: what, in this context, can Paul have meant by Galatians 5:14? Not only is the dilemma posed here in its most acute form; in the light of this passage, several proposals made to explain its origin prove inadequate. No significant shift in Paul’s thought can have taken place between the time when he wrote Galatians 5:13 and the fateful moment when he chanced upon the formulation of 5:14. And, given the juxtaposition of 5:14 with what immediately precedes, none but the most consistent advocate of Pauline inconsistency will suspect that Paul has been led unawares into self-contradiction. Even the proposal that “different questions” induce “different answers,” so suggestive elsewhere, does not serve here, for two reasons. First, even if Paul were suddenly shifting his focus to deal with a problem of a different sort, the proximity and passion of his declaration of freedom make it all but impossible to read 5:14 as marking an unconscious retreat from a position fervently maintained a verse earlier but now lost to view. Second, it is doubtful whether 5:13 introduces a significant shift in focus. Paul does here take up the subject of Christian behavior, and some see his attention as given now to the “libertines” rather than the “legalists” in the Galatian churches.10 Yet a close reading suggests that Paul treats Christian ethics with his nomistic opponents still very much in mind. Note in what follows how he insists again that believers are “not under the law” (5:18) and that, to the “fruit of the Spirit,” the law is not opposed (5:23). Paul discusses Christian behavior, it seems, in terms designed to meet a potential objection to his call for freedom: does it not follow (he might be asked) that 9 1 Cor 7:19 is frequently cited in the literature as well; the Mosaic law is not, however, in view in this chapter (for that matter, the only “commands” mentioned are Pauline and dominical; cf. 7:10, 17, 25, and the frequent Pauline imperatives), and the statement need mean no more than that submitting to God’s will is essential. – That Paul’s own views of correct behavior were shaped by his upbringing under the Jewish law (see Sanders, Law, 94–96) is not in question, but only his articulated understanding of the basis for Christian ethics. 10  For references, see Eckert, Verkündigung, 11–13, 131–132.



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Christians can sin freely because they are not under the law (cf. Rom 6:15)? Does not liberty in theory lead to license in practice? To such an objection, Paul’s answer, in a nutshell, is given in 5:13: freedom from the law must be maintained, but this is not to say that the ”flesh” is free to do as it pleases. If, then, in the argument that follows 5:13, Paul is consciously countering a potential objection to his earlier thesis, we need hold no exaggerated notions of his powers as a systematic thinker to find the suggestion incredible that this involves, in 5:14, the unconscious statement of its antithesis. The conclusion seems clear: Galatians 5:14 cannot be a stray piece of unassimilated theology, involving Paul in unconscious self-contradiction; rather, it represents what Paul himself considers a necessary nuance in a presentation of his view. In Paul’s thinking, Galatians 5:14 counters a possible misunderstanding of what he has already written, but does not contradict it. For Paul at least, it is somehow true and significant both that believers are “not under the law” (5:18), not “bound to keep the whole law” (5:3), and yet that “the whole law is fulfilled” in the love commandment (5:14). Thus, if we ask in what follows how the two notions may be thought to complement each other, we are not undertaking an exercise in harmonistic pilpul, but simply attempting to recover Paul’s thought. 1. Had there not been parallels to Galatians 5:14 in Romans, we might have thought that Paul’s point here was intentionally ironic: “If you Galatians are so insistent on keeping the law, then make this the law you keep …” Indeed, in light of the deliberately paradoxical language of 5:13 (“Express your freedom by being each other’s servant!”), some irony may very well carry over to the following verse. Such a view would be further confirmed if we could be certain that turmoil roused by proponents of the law was intended in 5:15 (“But if you bite and devour one another …”).11 Paul might then be implying that those zealous for the law would do well to heed its central demand! On the other hand, there are close parallels to Galatians 5:14 in Romans, where an occasion for irony is lacking; and Romans 8:4 speaks programmatically of God’s purpose that “the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.” If Galatians 5:14 is ironical, it is not “merely” so. 2. Does Paul mean, then, that Christians are free from the law as a means to salvation, or that they have been delivered from the law’s curse, but that the law remains even for them a valid statement of God’s will? Decisive objections to this view have been raised elsewhere12 and need not be repeated here. We may note simply one significant argument from silence that will be of importance later: Paul never derives appropriate Christian conduct 11 

12 

Cf. Räisänen, Law, 116 n. 109. See Räisänen, Law, 42–50; Westerholm, “Letter” [chapter 17 in this volume].

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simply and directly13 by applying pertinent commands in Torah – the inevitable procedure if Torah remained the binding statement of God’s will for believers. Somehow, then, on Paul’s understanding, the believer “fulfills” the whole law without being bound by its precepts. 3. Is there perhaps a difference between “the whole law” (ὅλον τὸν νόμον) that the circumcised must do (Gal 5:3) and “the whole law” (ὁ πᾶς νόμος) that believers fulfill (5:14)? Certainly, the Mosaic Torah is intended in both cases.14 But perhaps the point is that, while the circumcised are obligated to keep each individual provision of Torah, the believer fulfills Torah only as it has been reduced to the love commandment? That a reduction has in fact taken place in Paul’s scheme is perfectly clear, for Paul does not expect Christian behavior to conform with Torah’s commands of circumcision, purity, and the like.15 Yet had Paul merely wanted to say that the circumcised must obey every command while believers need obey only one, he would not have stressed that “the whole law” is fulfilled by Christians, or, in the parallel in Romans 13:8–10, that the various commandments listed as well as “any other commandment” are all “summed up” in the command to love one’s neighbor. The practical implication of what Paul writes may be Christian conformity to a reduced Torah; but his point is precisely that “the whole law” with all of its demands is somehow “fulfilled” by the Christian who loves. 4. This suggests that a distinction may be intended between the “doing” of the commands by the circumcised and the “fulfilling” of commands by Christians.16 Can such a distinction be maintained? Even before we define the terms more closely, there is good reason to suggest that the distinction is deliberate. The verb ποιεῖν is, of course, very general and may occur in any context, including where the Christian practice of righteousness is the topic (cf. Rom 13:3; 1 Cor 9:23; 10:31; Gal 6:9). It is worth noting, however, that in Paul, while Christians are never said

13  On two (!) occasions in the acknowledged Pauline epistles, Paul apparently draws additional support for his position on a matter of behavior from a precept in Torah: Deut 25:4 is cited and interpreted allegorically in the midst of a lengthy justification of Paul’s right to be supported by his churches (1 Cor 9:8–10); and in 1 Cor 14:34 (the authenticity of which has been questioned), the command that women are to be silent in the church is said to be “also” found in Torah (no one knows quite where). See Räisänen, Law, 68–69. That appropriate Christian behavior frequently coincides with the demands of Torah is only to be expected; but Paul avoids any suggestion of direct derivation. 14  For decisive reasons, see Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 96–97. For the contrary position, see Hübner, Law, 37. 15  See Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 100–103. 16  Cf. Betz, Galatians, 275.



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to “do” (ποιεῖν) the law,17 those “under the law” are seen as obligated to “do” its commands (Rom 10:5; Gal 3:10, 12; 5:3); indeed, the law itself, Paul claims, rests on the principle of “doing” as opposed to “believing” (Gal 3:12; Rom 10:5–6). If, then, the essence of life “under the law” is the requirement to “do” its commands, it is not strange that Paul would avoid the term in contexts where he relates Christian behavior to the law. On the other hand, where specifically Christian behavior is related positively to the Mosaic law, the verb πληροῦν or a cognate inevitably occurs (Rom 8:4; 13:8, 10; Gal 5:14); yet these terms are never used where the requirements or achievements of those living “under the law” are in view. Given the occasional nature of Paul’s correspondence, such a consistent distinction in usage is striking indeed and demands some explanation. What Paul means by “doing” the law is clear enough: those “under the law” are obligated to carry out, to perform, its individual and specific requirements (Gal 5:3). Certainly, the verb πληροῦν can also mean “to perform” (cf. Col 4:17), but there are nuances to its usage that should not be overlooked. The verb “is used … with an impersonal object, originally at least pictured to the mind as a receptacle to be filled, an empty form to be filled with reality; thus of a promise, prophecy, or statement of fact, ‘to satisfy the purport of,’ ‘to fit the terms of’ …; of commands and laws, ‘to satisfy the requirements of,’ ‘to obey fully.’”18 To “fulfill” the law thus implies that the obedience completely satisfies what is required. But this in turn means that πληροῦν is specially suited, whereas ποιεῖν is not, for use by an author who claims to have superior insight into what is required to satisfy the “true” intention of the lawgiver or the “real” demand of the law. Matthew 5:17 is a perfect illustration: πληρῶσαι says something different from, something more than, what ποιεῖν would say in that context.19 The meaning must not be reduced to the bald claim that Jesus “does” the law by doing whatever it commands to be done; rather, in some not clearly defined way (the verb has the advantage of positive connotations but not the liability of excessive specificity),20 the “true” meaning of the “law and the prophets” is satisfied, and they reach their intended goal, in Jesus’ ministry. 17 I am assuming that Christians are not specifically in view in Rom 2:13–14. Räisänen (Law, 63–64, n. 104) uses this passage as evidence against the view that Paul distinguished between “doing” and “fulfilling” the law, since “the Gentiles Paul had in mind could not ‘do’ the law (or its ἔργον) in any other sense than the Christians ‘fulfilled’ it, i. e. by living according to its central principle(s).” For practical purposes this may be so, but Paul is bent on making a theological point in insisting that Christians (and only Christians) “fulfill” the law. The pattern of his usage is too striking to be downplayed. 18 Burton, Commentary, 295. 19  Luz, “Erfüllung,” 416. 20  Cf. Luz, “Erfüllung,” 413; Räisänen, Law, 87–88; Trilling, Israel, 178–179.

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Paul’s usage seems similar. He would scarcely have been content with the bald statement that the one who loves his neighbor has “done” (πεποίηκεν) the law. On the one hand, so prosaic an assertion is too blatantly open to the objection that circumcision and food laws need to be “done” as well; on the other hand, the term gives no expression to Paul’s implicit claim to know what God “really” requires. For Paul, it is important to say that Christians “fulfill” the whole law, and thus to claim that their conduct (and theirs alone) fully satisfies the “real” purport of the law in its entirety while allowing the ambiguity of the term to blunt the force of the objection that certain individual requirements (with which, Paul would maintain, Christian behavior was never meant to conform) have not been “done. ” 5. A final distinction, however, remains crucial. “Doing” the law is what is required of those “under the law”; “fulfilling” the law is, for Paul, the result of Christian living the norms of which are stated in quite different terms. The claim that, when Paul “thought about behavior, he responded, ‘fulfill the law,’”21 does not in fact correspond to Pauline usage. Pauline statements of “fulfillment” are never in the imperative mood and, indeed, are more naturally in the passive than the active voice. Thus, Galatians 5:14 is not itself a command to fulfill the law but a statement that, when one loves one’s neighbor, the whole law is fully satisfied in the process. Romans 13:8–10 is exactly parallel: “he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law”; a rationale for this claim is then worked out in 13:9–10. When commands are given, when Christian duty is prescibed in advance rather than described in retrospect, then the terminology is quite different. The Pauline imperative in Galatians 5 is “Walk in the Spirit” (5:16). To repeat: the result of such a “walk” will be “fruit” that the law cannot condemn (5:22–23), “fruit” that in fact fully satisfies the law (5:14); but such statements are “made in retrospect.”22 Similarly, in Romans 8, God’s intention is that the just requirement of the law should be “fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (8:4). Again, the result of living according to the Spirit is that, in the process, the law is fulfilled (passive voice). But Christian duty in the chapter is then developed by requiring, not conformity to Torah’s demands, but a life “led by the Spirit of God.” Statements to the effect that the law is “fulfilled” by believers are thus not in conflict with the claim that believers are no longer subject to the law’s demands. The question remains why it is important for Paul, after proclaiming freedom from the law and defining Christian duty in other terms, to state the results of Christian behavior in terms of the law’s “fulfillment.” Two suggestions may be made. 21 Sanders, 22 Betz,

Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 84. Galatians, 275. Cf. Gerhardsson, Ethos, 66–67.



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1. “It is essential for Paul’s argument that he can confront Jewish transgression of the law with Christian fulfilment of it. Man under law is incapable of coping with the law (Rom 7.14–25, 8.5–8), not so the Christians (8.4, 8.9–11).”23 There is, admittedly, a “doctrinaire character” to “Paul’s convictions.”24 Christian behavior as defined by Paul often bore little resemblance to the behavior of Christians as observed by Paul. This is a real but separate problem. Here we need note only the importance for Paul’s case of saying that God’s Son has made possible “what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do”; namely, the “fulfillment” of the law (Rom 8:3–4). 2. It remains controversial whether Paul was familiar with the Jesus’ tradition that identified the love commandments as the “greatest” of the law’s demands (Mark 12:28–31; Matt 22:34–40). If he was, it would be natural for him both to see love as representing the “fulfillment” of the law and to want to show how Christian behavior conforms to the command.25 But statements of the law’s “fulfillment” should not be seen as compromising the coherence of Paul’s thought. Christians serve God, Paul maintains, not in the old way where conduct is prescribed by the law’s “letter,” but in the new way of the Spirit (Rom 7:6).26 Paradoxically, the results (not the requirements!) of the “old way” were said to be sinful passions, transgressions of the law, and death (Rom 7:5; 2 Cor 3:6; Gal 3:19). Paradoxically again, the “fruit” (but not the requirement) of the “new way” is the “fulfillment” of the law (Rom 8:4). The paradox is deliberate; it is hardly the expression of unresolved tensions in Paul’s thought. To conclude. In spite of the unsystematic character of Paul’s correspondence and the variety of situations, problems, and opponents addressed, the harrowed apostle appears to have been consistent in at least the following three points. 1. Paul never derives appropriate Christian behavior by simply applying relevant precepts from Torah. 2. Paul never claims that Christians “do” (ποιεῖν) the law; they – and they alone – are said to “fulfill” (πληροῦν) it. 3. Paul never speaks of the law’s fulfillment in prescribing Christian conduct, but only while describing its results. Such carefully maintained distinctions surely argue for more coherence of thought than a number of recent discussions of Paul would allow. Emer23 Räisänen,

Law, 114. Law, 118. 25  Cf. Eckert, Verkündigung, 135 n. 3. 26  Cf. Westerholm, “Letter” [chapter 17 in this volume]. 24 Räisänen,

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son’s dictum was not Pauline policy; nor, for that matter, did he ever claim to be “self-reliant.” Bibliography Betz, Hans Dieter. Galatians. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Burton, Ernest de Witt. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1921. Drane, John W. Paul: Libertine or Legalist? London: SPCK, 1975. Eckert, Jost. Die urchristliche Verkündigung im Streit zwischen Paulus und seinen Gegnern nach dem Galatierbrief. Regensburg: F. Pustet,1971. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. 2. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979. Gerhardsson, Birger. The Ethos of the Bible. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981. Hübner, Hans. Law in Paul’s Thought. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1984. Luz, Ulrich. “Die Erfüllung des Gesetzes bei Matthäus (Mt 5, 17–20).” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 75 (1978): 398–435. Räisänen, Heikki. Paul and the Law. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1983. Sanders, E. P. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983. Trilling, Wolfgang. Das wahre Israel. Third edition. Munich: Kösel, 1964. Westerholm, Stephen. “Letter and Spirit: The Foundation of Pauline Ethics.” New Testament Studies 30 (1984): 229–248.

Chapter 16

The Law and the Just Person (1 Tim 1:3–11) Scholarly discussions of 1 Timothy 1:8–11 have focused primarily on the question whether what is said here is compatible with Pauline views on the law as expressed in his acknowledged epistles. Proponents of Pauline authorship for the Pastorals see no difficulty in locating the tenets of these verses within the spectrum of Pauline thought; occasioned by a different dispute, Paul’s views here have been expressed from a different perspective, but by no means one irreconcilable with that of Romans and Galatians.1 On the other hand, some interpreters find in these verses alone sufficient reason for denying Pauline authorship to the epistle, 2 and a number of commentators appear to vie with each other in declaring how far these verses depart from the outlook of Paul.3 To some extent, these differences of opinion reflect differences in the understanding of the text itself; hence, we may hope that a careful study of these verses in their context in 1 Timothy will narrow the parameters of the discussion and permit a more balanced appraisal on the question of authorship. But the value of these verses is not confined to their potential contribution to that vexed issue. Here we have important evidence of one stage in the early church’s struggle to come to terms with the Mosaic law. While the Pastor’s4 opponents do not seem to be contending for a full-scale adoption of the Mosaic code, they nonetheless appear to be using the law as a base for fanciful speculations and a support for their ascetic practices. In opposing them, the Pastor expresses the widespread (though not universal) conviction of the early church that the law of Moses, though it has a divine 1  Most emphatic is Parry, Epistles, 45: “The idea expressed so concisely here is exactly parallel to the principle laid down in Gal. v. 16–24: and the office of law, as in the interest of the sinner awakening the consciousness of sin by condemning it, is an exact summary of the principle explained by the concrete case in Rom. vii. This close correspondence with S. Paul’s position is remarkable in so summary a reference.” Cf. also Dornier, Épîtres, 39; Kelly, Commentary, 49; Meinertz, Pastoralbriefe, 29; Spicq, Épîtres, 1.330. 2  Cf. Scott, Epistles, 11; and note the comments of Moule, “Problem,” 432. 3  “Superlatively un-Pauline” (Easton, Epistles, 13); “nothing could be further from Paul’s teaching” (Hanson, Letters, 25); “a positive travesty” of Pauline teaching (Houlden, Epistles, 53); “a dilution of Paul’s characteristic doctrine” (Leaney, Epistles, 46). 4  The term is a convenient one for the author of the Pastorals, though it is here not intended to prejudice the question of authorship. See the discussion below on “The Pastor and Paul.”

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origin and serves a definite purpose, is not to be used as the standard of Christian behavior. Here, however, the conviction is expressed in a form that owes more to Hellenistic than Hebraic discussions of law. In what follows, I will attempt to substantiate these statements.

The Opponents’ Use of the Law Though the allusive manner in which the Pastor refers to his opponents’ positions makes their definition notoriously difficult, several aspects of their use of the Mosaic law seem tolerably clear. Certainly, they claimed a competence in the law that the Pastor derides (1 Tim 1:7) and engaged in disputes about the law that he deplores as “useless and vain” (Tit 3:9). Yet there is nothing to suggest that his opponents were attempting to implement in any consistent way the whole of the Mosaic code. There is, for example, no debate over circumcision,5 the issue that Paul so urgently confronted in his letter to the Galatians and that would certainly have called for comment here as well had the Pastor’s opponents been insisting upon it.6 Evidently, they were not. In fact, to judge by the evidence of the Pastorals, their interest in the law was a selective one indeed, the uses they made of it being determined less by the structure and content of the Pentateuch itself than by patterns of thought and behavior that they brought to the text and attempted to foist upon it. The Pastor wants “certain people” (his favorite way of referring to his opponents; cf. 1:6, 19; 4:1; 5:24; 6:3, 10, 21, etc.) to be told “not to give their attention to myths and endless genealogies” (1 Tim 1:4). Such people are engaging in “endless speculations” (ἐκζητήσεις) rather than promoting the divine plan (or perhaps, since οἰκονομίαν θεοῦ is ambiguous, rather than carrying out the divinely given commission) and rather than realizing the goal of the divine charge (τὸ δὲ τέλος τῆς παραγγελίας), which is “love from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith” (1:4–5). Now it seems clear that the “myths and endless genealogies” and the “useless speculations” of the opponents were based on the Mosaic law. 1. Elsewhere, the Pastor refers to “Jewish myths” (Tit 1:14), which presumably would be based on the Jewish scriptures, and mentions in the same 5 

Cf. Hort, “Epistles,” 132–133. assume that the Pastorals reflect problems current at the time of their writing, not simply an attempt by a pseudonymous writer to recreate conditions prevailing at the time of Paul. This seems to be required, e. g., by the reference to “myths and endless genealogies” (1 Tim 1:4), which has no parallel in the acknowledged Pauline epistles. Cf. Barrett, Epistles, 12. 6  I



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breath “genealogies” and “disputes about the law” (Tit 3:9), where undoubtedly the Mosaic law is meant. 2. In the context in 1 Timothy 1, it is natural to assume that the “certain people” who have departed from the sort of heart, conscience, and faith that is the goal of the divine charge (1:5–6) are the same people who are failing to achieve that goal because of their preoccupation with “myths and genealogies” and “useless speculations” (1:4–5). But of the former it is then said that they wished to be “teachers of the law” (1:7). Presumably, then, they displayed their supposed expertise in the law by basing on it speculations that the Pastor deplores. 3. More tenuously, it may be suggested that the “charge” (παραγγελία), the purpose of which is stated in 1:5, at least includes the divinely given law of Scripture.7 The Pastor would then be stressing the true purpose of what God commands as opposed to the false use to which, by busying themselves with “myths and genealogies,” his opponents were putting the law. With the speculative side of the opponents’ use of the law we need not concern ourselves further here. Germane to our purposes, however, is the way in which they apparently found support in the Mosaic law for certain ascetic practices.8 1. In Titus 1:14, the Pastor refers to “Jewish myths” (which, as we have suggested, must have been based on Scripture) and “commandments of people who repudiate the truth.” These “commandments” are clearly of an ascetic nature, since the Pastor proceeds to emphasize that “all things are pure for those who are pure; but for the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure” (v. 15). Presumably, these “commandments” involved practices such as those described in 1 Timothy 4:3: the forbidding of marriage and the avoiding of certain foods (the Pastor again stresses that “everything created by God 7  It is often suggested that the παραγγελία of 1:5 must refer back to the commission given in v. 3 (ἵνα παραγγείλῃς …); cf. Brown, Epistles, 5; Spicq, Épîtres, 1.324; most emphatically, Weiss, Briefe, 82–83. To restrict the ponderous theological statement of 1:5 to an explication of a particular charge given to a particular person seems, however, too narrow a reading; cf. Brox, Pastoralbriefe, 103. Ellicott, Commentary, 25. The statement is rather on the same level as the close of v. 4, a characterization of the whole of the divine purpose. To interpret παραγγελία simply as the Mosaic law, as Calvin does, also appears to limit it unnecessarily; but perhaps that law should be included within the divine παραγγελία. 8  Cf. Lightfoot, “Date,” 415: “This asceticism, as in the case of the Colossians, is partly based on the Mosaic law, partly independent of, and contrary to, the spirit of Judaism. Of the former class is the abstaining from meats (1 Tim. iv. 3), though doubtless it went beyond the Mosaic distinction of meats clean and unclean; of the latter the prohibition of marriage (ib.), a tenet of many of the Gnostic sects.” See also Barrett, Epistles, 43; Parry, Epistles, 4; Scott, Epistles, 10; Wilson, Luke, 91 and 106.

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is good” [4:4–5]). Here, too, the context contains an exhortation to avoid “profane, old wives’ myths” (4:7), perhaps suggesting that support for the opponents’ practices was derived from their fanciful readings of the scriptures.9 2. In any case, it is clear from 1:7–9 that the would-be “teachers of the law” showed (in the Pastor’s view) their misunderstanding of the purpose of the law by applying regulations that they derived from it to Christians (for so, as we shall see below, the δίκαιος of 1:9 is to be understood). Again, we may assume that regulations such as those spoken of in 4:3 are meant. Nonetheless, it is clear that the Jewish law was being used as a support for opinions and practices whose real roots were quite different. The true motivation for these ascetic practices was the belief that the material world is evil and that those who know God will want to separate themselves as much as possible from it. This, which the polemic of 1 Timothy 4 and Titus 1 makes quite clear, brings the opponents’ beliefs within the broad spectrum of gnostic heresy.10 3. At this point, it may be useful to note parallels to the Pastoral heresy in other early Christian documents. The heretical teachers of Colossae were also engaging in “vain” speculations (Col 2:8) and ascetic practices (2:16– 23). Again, the true basis of the latter was a belief in the evil of the material world (cf. 2:23), but support was nonetheless being derived from Scripture:11 note the presence of specifically Jewish practices in 2:16 and Paul’s insistence (2:17) that the kind of things being observed were “a shadow of things to come” – that is, they belonged to the period of anticipation prior to Christ’s coming. Similarly, in the epistles of Ignatius to the Magnesians and Philadelphians, we find a heretical combination of useless “myths” (Magn.8.1) and (in this case, Docetic) speculations, on the one hand, with specifically Jewish practices (Magn. 8.1; 9.1; 10.3; Phld. 6.1) and evident appeals for support to the Jewish scriptures, on the other (Phld. 6.1; 8.2). It is against such misuse of the Mosaic law, not only as a base for futile speculations, but also as a support for ascetic practices whose true motivation was gnostic in character, that the Pastor directs his argument. 9  Hort,

in an influential article, suggested that parallels to the kind of legends denounced in 1 Tim 1:4 may be found in the book of Jubilees – where, of course, they are used to support particular legal interpretations (“Epistles,” 130–146). The fact that the Pastor refers to these “commandments” as being “of people” (Tit 1:14) should not be seen as ruling out the possibility that the opponents would have linked them with the sacred scriptures; it need imply no more than that the Pastor himself refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the connection. 10  Cf. Lightfoot, “Date,” 415: “It was only by violent wresting and distortion that the teaching of the Old Testament could be brought into any sort of fellowship with the Gnosis.” Also Haufe, “Irrlehre,” 330–331. 11  Cf. Lightfoot, “Date,” 413–415.



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The Pastor’s View of the Law When the Pastor speaks of the “holy scriptures” (2 Tim 3:15) and of “all scripture” as “inspired and profitable” (2 Tim 3:16), the Pentateuch is of course to be included in his descriptions.12 It is therefore not surprising when he declares (in words reminiscent of Rom 7:12) the (Mosaic) law to be “good.” In a sense, the statement comes as a concession to his opponents, self-styled “teachers of the law,” with whom he thus agrees that the law is, indeed, a fine thing.13 Yet the concession was certainly not a reluctant one. Early Christianity’s conviction that the Mosaic law had a divine origin and purpose was held by the Pastor as well. The Pastor differs from his opponents, then, not in his high regard for the law, but in his understanding of its use. The law is fine provided it is used “lawfully,” “properly,” “in line with its intended purpose” (so we might render νομίμως, v. 8). In these opening verses in 1 Timothy, we have both a general statement about God’s purpose in what he commands (1:4–7) and a more specific statement about the intention of the Mosaic law (vv. 8–11). As we have seen, “certain people” who teach “deviant doctrine” are to be told not to “give their attention to myths and endless genealogies” (1:3–4). These latter promote “useless speculations” rather than the divine program that is operative through faith (οἰκονομίαν θεοῦ τὴν ἐν πίστει). The Pastor then proceeds by pointing out the true purpose of the divine charge (τὸ δὲ τέλος τῆς παραγγελίας): it is meant to foster “love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (v. 5). Here, again, the Pastor is simply affirming convictions central to the thinking of the early church: that the sum and purpose of what God commands is love (Matt 22:37–40; Rom 13:8–10; Gal 5:14); that God is ultimately more concerned about purity of heart than he is about the observance of external rites (Matt 5:8; Mark 7:15 par.; Rom 14:17, etc.); and that, whereas external rites may be observed while the heart is far from God, sincerity is required of those who would be his children (Mark 7:6–7).14 The primacy of these basic convictions, however, was being jeopardized by the fruitless speculations and ascetic regulations of the Pastor’s opponents. This general statement of the divine purpose should be included in the Pastor’s rebuttal of his opponents’ use of the law. A more specific counter follows in verses 8–11. After affirming that the law is indeed “good” when 12 

Cf. Wilson, Luke, 99. Bernard, Epistles, 26; Ellicott, Commentary, 27; Humphreys, Epistles, 85; Huther, Handbook, 91. 14  A discussion of the separate terms in v. 5 would take us far afield; it is sufficient to note here, with Barrett (Epistles, 41): “Each of these terms is (for our author) a way of speaking of sincerity.” 13 Cf.

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put to its proper use, he claims that the law was not intended for the “just person” but rather for sundry sorts of sinners (vv. 9–11). Because νόμος is used without an article (not in itself a decisive factor), and because of various parallels in Greek literature, it has sometimes been thought that law in general rather than specifically the Mosaic law may be meant. But however we read the Greek parallels, the statement here must at least be intended to apply to the Mosaic law as well, since it is his opponents’ use of that law that the Pastor is countering. Moreover, since the law is said to be directed against whatever is opposed to “sound teaching” (i. e., to the Christian faith, v. 10), it is not any human law but that of God – the Mosaic code – that must be meant. At this point, it is important to note what the text does, and what it does not, say.15 Verses 9 and 10 are often read as though the Pastor here counters his opponents’ use of the law with the argument that the law’s intended function was simply to act as a guide to morals and a restraint on sin. But such an argument must be read into the text, which states no more than that the law was not enacted for the “just person” but rather for sinners. What function the law performs among the latter is not stated; and though the Pastor’s views on the subject may perhaps be inferred from what he says, the thrust of his argument can hardly lie in something he does not say. The argument is rather that his opponents are wrong in applying regulations that they derive from the law (the Pastor does not at this point dispute the legitimacy of the derivation) to people for whom the law was not meant: “knowing this, that the law is not laid down for the just person, but for the lawless.”16 Who, then, is the “just person” for whom the law is not intended? The question is of some importance, since much of the controversy over whether or not these verses can be construed as Pauline rests on the answer it is given. If δίκαιος refers to the person who has been justified by faith (cf. Paul’s usage in Rom 1:17; 5:19), then what is said here can be seen as the reaffirmation of a central Pauline tenet: that believers are not “under law” (Rom 6:14), that they have died to it and now serve God in a new way (Rom 7:1–6). If, on the other hand, the “just person” means merely the “upright citizen” as opposed to the flagrant criminal, then we would seem to be far from the viewpoint of Paul.

15 

See the remarks of Huther, Handbook, 91–92, especially 92 n. 1. Ellicott, Commentary, 28: “The false teachers, on the contrary, assumed that it was designed for the righteous man, urged their interpretation of it as necessary appendices to the Gospel.” Barrett (Epistles, 42) suggests that this argument may already be signaled in the latter part of v. 7, where περὶ τίνων might be read “the persons about whom”; in other words, “they talk about the Law, but apply it to the wrong persons.” 16 Cf.



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Against the view that anything so specific as “the one who is justified by faith” is meant, the following objections may be raised. 1. The context seems to require that a person who actually lives in a “just” way is meant. There is nothing to suggest that one’s standing before God is the issue here. The contrast appears to be between those who live in flagrant transgression of the law and those who do not. 2. As we shall see, the statement in 1 Timothy 1:9 has parallels in GrecoRoman discussions of law. In these parallels, though there is some variation in the descriptions of those who do not need laws to pattern their lives after, discussion concerns those who are “just” in their relations with others in society rather than their standing before God. 3. The usage of δίκαιος and its cognates elsewhere in the Pastorals suggests that moral virtue rather than one’s standing before God is meant.17 The evidence is limited and not quite so one-sided as it is sometimes presented as being, for there is no reason to doubt that Titus 3:7 refers to a believer’s initial justification by God’s grace.18 But elsewhere δικαιοσύνη is but one virtue among others (1 Tim 6:11; 2 Tim 2:22; cf. Tit 2:12); and if, in 2 Timothy 3:16 and 4:8, all other virtues are subsumed in it, it remains a description of the Christian’s way of living. This limited evidence at least supports the view that δίκαιος in 1 Timothy 1:9 is used of one’s actual way of living rather than one’s standing before God. That being said, however, it is clear that the Pastor is not thinking of the “right-living” person in general, but specifically of the Christian as rightliving person.19 1. This seems apparent from the progression of the argument itself. The Pastor, in countering his opponents’ application of ascetic regulations to Christians, clearly wants to say that they should not be so applied. This he argues by saying that the law is not intended for the “just person,” that is, the Christian (as right-living person). His interest is hardly in decent-living folk outside the church. 2. The δίκαιος whom the Pastor has in mind is at least partly defined by the contrast between the “just person” and the various wrong-doers listed in verses 9 and 10. Since many of the types of sinners mentioned involve the 17 Cf. Wilson, Luke, 24–27. It is perhaps worth noting that Paul himself can use δικαιοσύνη as one moral virtue among others (see Phil 4:8, and note δικαίως in a list of adverbs, 1 Thess 2:10), and ὁ δίκαιος (apparently) of the decent citizen (Rom 5:7). 18  Cf. Barrett, Epistles, 143. 19  Cf. von Soden, Briefe, 220–221. He rules out the Pauline sense of one “justified by faith” because of the context, but finds it “highly probable” that the Christian is nonetheless meant.

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egregious transgressions of flagrant criminals, some see the δίκαιος simply as the “decent citizen.”20 In fact, however, it is characteristic of such lists to highlight particularly heinous abuses.21 A better indication of whom the Pastor means by the δίκαιος is provided by the contrast at the close of the list with whatever is “opposed to sound teaching”; that is, to the Christian message and teaching (v. 10). The “just person” is thus contrasted with all who oppose the Christian gospel. Evidently, the Pastor includes among those who are not “just” everyone outside the Christian church!22 3. This is confirmed by verse 11, though the relation of this verse with what precedes is not clear. If we take it (with most commentaries) that the view of the law expressed in verses 8–10 is here stated to be “according to the gospel,” some specifically Christian interpretation of the law must be meant: presumably, that it is intended not for those who believe in the gospel, but for “sinners” who do not.23 But we can go one step further in our description of the “just person.” For if the Pastor means “the Christian” by this term, he is certainly under no illusions that those who are now Christians have always been “just.” The awareness of what conversion and “regeneration” (cf. Tit 3:5 in its context) meant for the early Christians scarcely permitted them to denounce the wrongs of those outside the church without adding quickly, “For we ourselves were once …” or “and such were some of you” (cf. Tit 3:3; 1 Cor 6:11). So here, the list of wrong-doers outside the church leads the Pastor immediately to a discussion of “the grace of our Lord” (1:14) and of the fact that Christ Jesus came “to save sinners” (1:15; note that “sinners” is repeated from the list of those for whom the law was intended, 1:9). This doctrine finds exemplary expression in the conversion of Paul himself (1:13, 15–16), whose wrongs (1:13) place him in a class with the wrong-doers of verses 9 and 10. No one could be clearer than the Pastor that Christians themselves are sinners who have been “saved” and “justified,” not by their own righteousness, but by God’s grace (Tit 3:5–7). If they now live righteous lives, it is because they have been schooled in righteousness by “the grace of God that brings salvation to all” (Tit 2:11–12). Thus, if the law no longer applies to them as “just” people, there was nevertheless a time when they, as sinners, were the subjects of its ordinances like all the rest. 20 

Cf. Easton, Epistles, 110; Scott, Epistles, 10. Dibelius-Conzelmann, Epistles, 22–23: “In the passage under discussion, it is remarkable that only serious and unusual crimes are mentioned. This is to be explained on the basis of the style of such lists. They are intended to have the effect of posters.” Also Brox, Pastoralbriefe, 106; Kelly, Commentary, 49. For the composition of the list, see McEleney, “Lists,” 203–219. 22  Cf. Falconer, Epistles, 123. 23  Cf. Huther, Handbook, 92–93. 21  Cf.



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This, then, is the Pastor’s more specific counter to his opponents’ use of the law: the law was not intended for Christians (as “just” people), but for “sinners” outside the church of Jesus Christ.

The Background to the Pastor’s View of the Law To the reader who turns to these verses after studying what the Hebrew scriptures say about the Torah, it will come as a surprise to learn that the Mosaic law was intended, not for the righteous person, but for sinners. There, it is to Israel, God’s chosen people, that the law is given; and it is given as a mark, not of Israel’s peculiar sinfulness (though sinful she was), but of the special love God has for her: “He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and judgments to Israel. He has not done so with any other nation; they are ignorant of his judgments. Praise the LORD!” (Ps 147:19–20; cf. Deut 4:6–8). Far from the law not being intended for the righteous, Psalm 1 speaks of the righteous person as precisely the one whose “delight is in the law of the LORD, and in his law he meditates day and night” (cf. also Ps 18:21–25 [Eng. trans., 20–24]; 119:1, 7). Where righteousness is defined in terms of obedience to a divinely revealed law (as it is in much of the Hebrew Bible and, if anything, even more emphatically in Palestinian Judaism of the Second Temple period), there the view that the righteous need no law would seem out of place. We may confidently affirm of the axiom in 1 Timothy 1:9–10 that it is not derived in any straightforward way from traditional Jewish piety.24 When we come to the early church, however, we find the conviction widespread that, whatever purpose the law of God may once have had, a new age has now dawned in which the redeemed are no longer governed by its statutes.25 Texts from the writings of Paul spring immediately to mind, and we will be considering below the relation between 1 Timothy 1:8–11 24  This, of course, is not to say that Jews influenced by Hellenistic thought could not express themselves – or even interpret the scriptures – in terms similar to the parallels from the Greco-Roman world that we will note below. See the comments of Goodenough, By Light, Light, 84–85. And note Philo, Leg. All. 1, 92–94; Abr. 5–6, 16, 275–276; Decal. 1; Virt. 194. 25  It should, of course, be noted that this conviction does (at least in part) develop out of Jer 31:31–34 (brought into the discussion of 1 Tim 1:8 by Dornier, Épîtres, 39). There the failure of God’s people to observe the law is acknowledged, but a new covenant is promised: laws would no longer need to be taught, since God himself would write them on the hearts of his people. But, critical though these verses were in the development of the widespread early church conviction (which, I argue, the Pastor shares), the form in which that conviction is expressed in 1 Tim 1:8–11 would seem to owe more to GrecoRoman discussions of law, as noted below.

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and what we find in his acknowledged epistles. But it is worth noting that the conviction in a more general form was not uniquely Pauline. 1. Jesus himself can hardly have spoken explicitly of abolishing the law either as a whole or in part; had he done so, Matthew 5:17–20 would not have found a place in the gospel tradition.26 Nonetheless, there is a perceptible difference between the Torah-centered piety of the Pharisees of his day, where life in all its aspects was to be governed by the interpretation and application of Torah’s statutes, and that commended by Jesus. On the one hand, whereas Pharisees naturally concerned themselves with the detailed observance of laws related to ritual purity, tithing, and the Sabbath, Jesus proclaimed the good news of God’s salvation to “sinners” without ever suggesting a need to comply with such laws. On the other hand, the demands he made on his followers focused on the attitude of the heart. The latter must, of course, find expression in deeds (a good tree bears good fruit!), but only the general character of such deeds is outlined. There is no attempt to make of Torah an exhaustive code of behavior. Obviously, there are roots in the life and teaching of Jesus to the attitude toward the law that we have noted as widespread in the early church. 2. The Johannine writings provide another witness to the way in which parts of the early church distanced themselves from the Mosaic law. “The law was given by Moses” (John 1:17); it is consistently spoken of as the law of the Jews (“your law,” in the disputes of the Johannine Jesus with “the Jews” [8:17; 10:34; cf. 7:19], and, even more tellingly, “their law” in words spoken to his disciples [15:25]). But with Jesus Christ has come a new age marked by “grace and truth” (John 1:17); its ethic is summed up in the “new commandment” that Christ gave his followers: “that you love one another” (John 13:34). The Mosaic law is not used as the basis of obligations placed upon Christians. And although this may in part be due to shifts in time and milieu that made the Jewish law seem irrelevant, it should also be noted that dependence on the law would contradict Johannine principles. 27 Those who come to Jesus are said to be taught by God (John 6:45), to have an “anointing” that obviates the need of teaching from without (1 John 2:20, 27). Here, then, there is no trace of any sense that believers are subject to the Mosaic law. 3. The epistle to the Hebrews also expresses the conviction that the old dispensation is passing away, that a new has taken its place (8:13) – and that the change affects the law as well: “For where there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well” (7:12). The message 26  27 

For the subject matter of this paragraph, see my Jesus and Scribal Authority. Cf. Gerhardsson, Ethos, 108–109.



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once “declared by angels had its validity, and every transgression or disobedience received its just punishment”; but a new and a great salvation now obtain, and it is these that must be heeded (2:1–4). To be sure, the specific ordinances mentioned as obsolete are of a ritual rather than moral nature. But the writer to the Hebrews clearly shared the conviction that the binding force of all parts of a code of law stood or fell together (cf. 7:12; Jas 2:10; Gal 5:3); and it may be noted again that the Christian’s obligation is never stated in terms of a fulfilling of Mosaic law. That the law is not intended for the Christian is thus a conviction that the Pastor shares with much of early Christianity. The peculiar form in which he states this conviction, however, finds its closest parallels in GrecoRoman discussions about law. The commentaries generally confirm their citations to the closest verbal parallels to 1 Timothy 1:9–10. These references are obscure ones indeed: a fragment of Antiphanes (a fourth century BCE writer of comedies) preserved in the Florilegium of Stobaeus;28 words of Theophrastus, Aristotle’s successor, also preserved by Stobaeus;29 a saying attributed to Socrates by Clement of Alexandria.30 But Greek literature gives wide evidence of the view that certain people, or people with a certain training, do not need laws to pattern their lives after, while others require the restraint and guidance of laws if they are to kept from wronging their fellows. Hence, a somewhat fuller (though, of course, far from complete) documentation is in order here. It would be inappropriate to speak of the Greek view of law, since the subject was one of lively debate, and quite opposing views are represented in the literature. It is, for example, not difficult to discover passages that differ from, or even contradict, the tenet of our verses. In Book 2 of Plato’s Republic, Glaucon puts forward the popular view (he insists it is not his own) that no one is just by their own choosing (οὐδεὶς ἑκὼν δίκαιος ἀλλ᾽ ἀναγκαζόμενος, 360c); that, were they certain they could act as they pleased with impunity, the “just” would behave no differently than the unjust. Here, while the view is clearly implied that law acts as a restraint on wrong-doers, it is vehemently denied that anybody is “just” apart from the influence of law. Another, somewhat loftier, view saw in the rule of law the replacement for, and safeguard again, that of tyranny (see especially Herodotus, Hist 7.104; Euripides, Suppl 429–434).31 In such discussions, law serves again as a curb on wrong-doing; but it is rather that of rulers than that of those ruled 28 

Frag. 288: ὁ μηδὲν ἀδικῶν οὐδενὸς δεῖται νόμου. Flor 37.21: ὀλίγων οἱ ἀγαθοὶ νόμων δέονται. 30  Stromata 4. 3. 10: Σωκράτης δὲ νόμον ἓνεκα ἀγαθῶν οὐκ ἆν γενέσθαι. 31 Even Plato, who would have preferred to see a “wise” ruler free to decide the best course of action without being impeded by laws (which, after all, can only deal in generalities), realized that, rulers and the temptations of rulership being what they are, 29 

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that is meant. Among certain philosophers, law was seen not simply as a restraint on crime, but also as a crucial instrument for inculcating proper mores of behavior. These important aspects of Greek thinking about law cannot be developed further here. Alongside these lofty ideals, however, there were more pragmatic views as well. Human beings, when isolated from law and justice, are the worst of animals, according to Aristotle (Pol 1.1253a).32 The notion that the sanctions of law should serve as a restraint on wrong-doing is common in the orators (e. g., Lysias 1.47–48; 22.20; 27.5; Isocrates, Areop 20; Demosthenes, Meidias 76, 227).33 It is in part reverence for law, Pericles tells the Athenians, that keeps them from lawlessness (Thucydides 2.37.3). Plato speaks of people’s lawless desires being kept in line by law (Repub 9.571b and 574e), and notes that, as a second best to being oneself δίκαιος, one may become so by being corrected with the penalties imposed by law (Gorg 527b-c).34 But this was indeed “second best,” and Plato allowed that there might be a few people who were “just” of their own accord, even when they had the opportunity to commit acts of injustice with impunity (Gorg 526a).35 Everyone should be governed by the “divine and intelligent” element in human beings; but while some will need such rule imposed on them from without (this is said to be the function of law), it is preferable if the ruling intelligence is one’s own (Repub 9.590d-e). Laws do not have to be spelled out for those who obey them anyway, but only for those who would otherwise disobey them (Laws 9.854c and 870e–871a). Similarly, Antisthenes is reported to have maintained that the wise will be guided in their public acts not by laws, but by virtue (Diog. Laer. 6.11). Aristotle speaks of those who are a “law unto themselves” (Nic Eth 4.1128a; cf. Pol 3.1284a).36 There is, in his view, more merit in being just without the compulsion of written law than with it (Rhet 1.1375a). If all human beings were good, Dio Chrysostom later contended, there would be no need of written laws (76.4; cf. also Lucian, Demonax 59). It was, in fact, Stoic doctrine that, though the the restraint of law is probably necessary. Cf. Statesman 294a–302a; Laws 4.713c–714a; 9.875c-d. Note also Aristotle, Pol 4.1292a. 32  Cf. Herodotus 4.106; (Ps.) Demosthenes 25 (Aristogeiton 1), 20. Note also Homer’s picture of the savage Cyclopes in Odys 9 (esp. 105–115, 213–215, 273–278): they lived “without law” (ἀθέμιστοι). 33  Note, too, the famous justification for punishment as a deterrent in Plato, Prot 324a-c. 34  For references in later literature to the restraining influence of law, cf. Dio Chry. 75.2; Cicero, De Leg 2.11; Lucretius 5.1141–1160; Seneca, Ep 90.6. 35  Cf. Cicero, De Off 3.75–76. Cicero notes that the person who avoids doing wrong simply to avoid punishment is not really “just,” since such a person (unlike the truly “just” person) will resort to injustice if given a free hand. Cf. De Fin 2.71; De Leg 1.40–41. 36  With this language at least, Paul himself was familiar; cf. Rom 2:14.



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average person needs the guidance of laws, the wise do of their own accord what the law demands.37 Various philosophers are said to have claimed that their philosophy enabled them to do voluntarily what others did only under the constraint of law (Diog. Laer. 2.68; 5.20; Cicero, De Re Pub 1.3; note also Isocrates, Antid 238; Plato, Repub 3.405c). Thus, we have abundant evidence for the views that, while law is intended to curb wrong-doing, there are “just people” (of varying definitions) who do what is right of their own accord and need no law. It seems fair to assume that the form that the Pastor’s argument takes in 1 Timothy 1:9–10 owes something to such discussions. What came to him doubtless as a commonplace of his day nonetheless appeared to him to be a suitable dress for a specifically Christian doctrine, provided the terms were understood within a Christian frame of reference: the law (for his argument requires that the statement be true of the Mosaic code) is not meant for Christians (for, in his view, it is they who are “just”) but for sinners (who, for him, are all those outside the church of Jesus Christ). Hence, his opponents are wrong, not only in their understanding of what the divine charge is all about (1:4–7), but also in applying regulations that they derive from the law to Christians, for whom the law is not meant (1:8–11).

The Pastor and Paul At this point we should be in a better position to assess the relation between 1 Timothy 1:8–11 and Paul’s views as expressed in his acknowledged epistles. We will note (1) areas of supposed incompatibility that can in fact be resolved; (2) similarities between Pauline tenets and these verses in 1 Timothy; and (3) differences and tensions that remain. 1. We must not assume without further ado that the Pastor was simply attempting to restate Paul’s earlier arguments. As we have seen, the situation he confronted was a different one from that which Paul faced when he wrote to the Romans and Galatians (it is closer to the problem in Colossae). Provided the argument here makes some sense in its context, it must be judged on its own merits rather than in terms of its success or failure in recapitulating the argument of Romans 6 and 7. The latter is not necessarily “misunderstood” simply because it is not restated. Even the attributing of a different function to the law from what we find in Romans and Galatians does not by itself rule out Pauline authorship; it must first be shown that such a function is incompatible with Paul’s views on the matter. 37  Cf. Cicero, Parad Stoic 5.34; Plutarch, Stoic Rep 1038a; Kidd, “Relation,” 192–194; Pohlenz, Stoa, 1.133.

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It has been claimed that Paul could never have said that the law was not meant for the “righteous” person.38 This is true if, by δίκαιος in 1 Timothy 1:9, no more than the upright, decent citizen is meant, for the law brings the “knowledge of sin” to all (Rom 3:20). But if, by δίκαιος, the Christian is meant, the objection loses its force. Similarly, the claim that “the writer thinks, as Paul did not, of the Law as being fulfilled by a ‘righteous’ man”39 may be discounted if the “righteous” person is the Christian (cf. Rom 8:3–4; 13:8–10; Gal 5:14, and the discussion below). C. F. D. Moule speaks of 1 Timothy 1:8–11 as representing “a different world of thought” from that of Paul, since, for Paul, the law is “liable to abuse precisely when it is used ‘lawfully.’”40 But if the Pastor means by the expression no more than that the law in its various functions is intended for non-believers rather than the church, then there is nothing un-Pauline in his contention. There are thus a number of objections to Pauline authorship of the Pastorals on the basis of 1 Timothy 1:8–11 that carry little weight if the passage is interpreted as I have done. 2. On the contrary, the view that the law, while divinely given and “good,” is binding only on those who are not believers is fully in line with Pauline tenets. To be sure, the way in which that tenet is developed in Romans 5–7 is not repeated here. There it is argued that those who have been “baptized into Christ Jesus” have participated in his death; in the process, they left with him the sphere where sin, death, and the law exercise their rule. They have “died to the law through the body of Christ” (Rom 7:4); as a result, they have now been set free from its domain in order to serve God in a new way, by the Spirit (7:1–6).41 That argument is not repeated in 1 Timothy. In fact, to imply that the law is not meant for believers inasmuch as they (unlike the “lawless”) live in a righteous manner appears to be quite a different explanation of their freedom from law. But for Paul, the new life in the Spirit is one in the active service of righteousness (Rom 6:12–23); it is one that, though motivated and impelled in a new way, nevertheless fulfills the righteous demands of God (demands that those living under obligation to law can never meet [Rom 8:3–4]); it is a life in love, and thus “the fulfillment of the law” (13:8–10; cf. Gal 5:14); a life that bears fruit that the law does not condemn (Gal 5:22– 23). There is thus nothing un-Pauline in saying that the law is not meant for those (believers) who live in a righteous manner. 38 Scott,

Epistles, 11. Epistles, 122. 40  Moule, “Problem,” 432. 41  See my article “Letter” [chapter 17 in this volume]. 39 Falconer,



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3. The Pauline emphasis that one nonetheless misses in 1 Timothy 1 is the belief that the new life in righteousness is one lived “in the Spirit.” Of course, neither Paul nor a disciple was under any obligation to repeat every aspect of the earlier argument; and, in fact. no more really needed to be established here than that the opponents’ regulations do not apply to believers. An argument from silence is of limited value in any case; and for each omission of some typically “Pauline” doctrine in the Pastorals, a similar omission can be pointed out in one or more of the acknowledged Pauline epistles.42 Still, the Pauline contrast between law and Spirit is such an insistent one that the omission of any reference to the Spirit here (especially when combined with the very restricted role the Spirit plays in the rest of the Pastorals) is at least noteworthy.43 It is difficult to compare Paul’s view of the functions of the law with what is said here since, as we have noted, the Pastor’s views on that subject are at best implied. No more is stated than that the law is not intended for the “just person,” but rather for various kinds of sinners.44 This seems to imply (and the Greco-Roman discussions in similar terms make quite explicit) that wrong-doers need the restraining influence of the law whereas the “just” do not.45 Such a view, while similar to Paul’s outlook toward the authority of the state (Rom 13:1–5; note especially v. 3),46 is not expressed with regard to the law in the acknowledged epistles. On the contrary, it appears to be in some tension with the view that the law was given “in order that sin might multiply” (Rom 5:20; how this operated is illustrated by Rom 5:13; 7:7–13). But here, to repeat, we are dealing with what is at best implied in 1 Timothy. The function of the law is not stated; only its applicability to sinners. The evidence of the argument about the law for the authorship of the Pastorals is thus hardly conclusive. That issue will have to be resolved (if it can be resolved) with the help of other criteria. What is clear is that the Pastor is one with much of early Christianity – including Paul – in maintaining that Christians are not to be regulated by the Mosaic law, and that the divine charge relates rather to love and to the character of one’s heart than to the observance of external regulations. 42 

Cf. Guthrie, Epistles, 42. Cf. the comments of Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit, 347–350. 44  It is perhaps worth noting that Gal 3:19 (where the law is said to have been given “for the sake of transgressions”) is similarly ambiguous. It is only what we know about Paul’s thought from other passages that suggests that the defining or “increasing” rather than the curbing of sin is (probably!) meant (cf. Rom 5:20). 45  If no more is meant than that law serves to bring to such wrong-doers as are listed the knowledge of sin and the law’s condemnation, then, of course, the point is quite Pauline. 46  Cf. Dibelius-Conzelmann, Epistles, 22. 43 

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Bibliography Barrett, C. K. The Pastoral Epistles. Oxford: Clarendon, 1963. Bernard, J. H. The Pastoral Epistles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1906. Brown, Ernest Faulkner. The Pastoral Epistles. London: Methuen, 1917. Brox, Norbert. Die Pastoralbriefe. Regensburg: F. Pustet, 1969. Dibelius, Martin and Hans Conzelmann. The Pastoral Epistles. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972. Dornier, P. Les épîtres pastorales. Paris: Gabalda, 1969. Dunn, James D. G. Jesus and the Spirit. London: SCM, 1975. Easton, Burton Scott. The Pastoral Epistles. New York: Scribner, 1947. Ellicott, Charles J. A Critical and Grammatical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles. Boston: W. F. Draper, 1866. Falconer, Sir Robert. The Pastoral Epistles. Oxford: Clarendon, 1937. Gerhardsson, Birger. The Ethos of the Bible. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981. Goodenough, Erwin Ramsdell. By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935. Guthrie, Donald. The Pastoral Epistles. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957. Hanson, Anthony Tyrrell. The Pastoral Letters. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1966. Haufe, G. “Gnostische Irrlehre und ihre Abwehr in den Pastoralbriefe.” In Gnosis und Neues Testament, edited by Karl-Wolfgang Tröger. Gütersloh: Mohn, 1973, 325–339. Hort, Fenton John Anthony. “The Pastoral Epistles.” In Hort, Judaistic Christianity. London: Macmillan, 1904, 130–146. Houlden, J. L. The Pastoral Epistles. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976. Humphreys, Alfred Edward. The Epistles to Timothy and Titus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901. Huther, Johann Eduard. Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1881. Kelly, J. N. D. A Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles. London: A. & C. Black, 1963. Kidd, I. G. “The Relation of Stoic Intermediaries to the Summum Bonum, with Reference to Change in the Stoa.” Classical Quarterly 5 (N. S.) (1955): 181–194. Leaney, A. R. C. The Epistles to Timothy, Titus and Philemon. London: SCM, 1960. Lightfoot, J. B. “The Date of the Pastoral Epistles.” In Lightfoot, Biblical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1893, 397–418. McEleney, Neil J. “The Vice Lists of the Pastoral Epistles.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 36 (1974): 203–219. Meinertz, Max. Die Pastoralbriefe des heiligen Paulus. Fourth edition. Bonn: Hanstein, 1931. Moule, C. F. D. “The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles: A Reappraisal.” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 47 (1965): 430–452. Parry, Reginald St. John. The Pastoral Epistles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920. Pohlenz, Max. Die Stoa. Fourth edition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970. Scott, Ernest Findlay. The Pastoral Epistles. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1936. Spicq, C. Les épîtres pastorales. Fourth edition. Paris: Gabalda, 1969. von Soden, Hermann. Die Briefe an die Kolosser, Epheser, Philemon, Die Pastoralbriefe. Freiburg: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1893.



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Weiss, Bernhard. Die Briefe Pauli an Timotheus und Titus. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1902. Westerholm, Stephen. Jesus and Scribal Authority. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1978. – “Letter and Spirit: The Foundation of Pauline Ethics.” New Testament Studies 30 (1984): 229–248. Wilson, Stephen G. Luke and the Pastoral Epistles. London: SPCK, 1979.

Chapter 17

Letter and Spirit: The Foundation of Pauline Ethics The letter-spirit antithesis occurs in only three verses in the Pauline corpus: in Romans 2:29 (but note also v. 27), 7:6, and 2 Corinthians 3:6. Nonetheless, it has traditionally been assigned a significance out of all proportion to its meager textual base. Nor is this tendency difficult to account for: in terms so concise and memorable that they have passed into common speech, the antithesis captures a principle of manifest importance. Furthermore, those terms are sufficiently ambiguous (especially when separated from their original context) to allow thinkers of widely different views1 to see in them an expression of favorite themes of their own, and thus to lend to the latter the sanction of St Paul. Naturally, this leaves the exegete with the thankless task of remarking, “Very interesting – but not exactly what the apostle had in mind!” Yet the task needs to be undertaken, and the meaning Paul attached to the words carefully defined. Though the antithesis occurs in only three texts, in each case it closes a segment of Paul’s argument, summarizing a principle critical to the train of thought. In Romans 2:29, the antithesis both concludes and sums up the discussion of the preceding verses about the true Jew and the only apparent one. In Romans 7:6, it links the preceding section about freedom from the law and service to God with the themes that will occupy Paul throughout the remainder of chapter 7 (life under the “letter”) and even into chapter 8 (the Spirit-led life).2 Similarly, in 2 Corinthians 3, the antithesis both recalls the contrast between letters written in ink on stone and those written on “hearts of flesh” by the Spirit (3:3) and leads into the discussion of the “ministry of death” and that of the Spirit (3:7–18). Thus, for Paul no less than for those who have interpreted or appropriated his words, the antithesis served as a handy formula expressing central convictions. But what, more precisely, were those convictions?

1  Note, e. g., Käsemann’s remarks about the “liberal-idealist tradition” (Käsemann, “Spirit,” 139); and see the articles of Cohen on “Letter and Spirit.” 2  Cf. Käsemann, An die Römer, 182, and the literature there mentioned.

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Letter-Spirit and Pauline Hermeneutics For Origen, the antithesis marked the distinction between the literal meaning of Scripture and its allegorical interpretation.3 He has had his followers,4 but today it is generally recognized that such a distinction must be read into the Pauline texts. Still, a number of modern scholars do see the antithesis as expressing something central to Pauline hermeneutics: “letter” and “spirit” are thought to correspond to an inadequate and an adequate understanding of the sacred scriptures, even though today these understandings are seldom identified with Scripture’s literal and allegorical senses.5 Second Corinthians 3 in particular seems to lend itself to such an interpretation:6 in the latter part of the chapter, Paul speaks specifically of the reading of the old covenant and of a “veil” that is present when it is read by Jews (3:14–15). Some commentators see in the “veil” a reference to the inadequacies of Jewish hermeneutics: their failure to see Christian truth in the Old Testament, their failure to read the scriptures “spiritually,” and the like.7 Such inadequate exegesis is thought to be indicated by the “letter” of verse 6, and is contrasted with the true, “spiritual” understanding.8 The occurrence of the antithesis in Romans 7:6 has been similarly understood. Particularly those who believe that the law of Moses, correctly understood, is still binding on the Christian are inclined to interpret the “oldness of the letter” as indicating the obsolescence, not of the law itself, but of a certain inadequate understanding of the law. We may cite C. E. B. Cranfield 3  Cf. Grant’s study of Origen’s use of the allegorical method, The Letter and the Spirit. 4 Cf. Schneider’s discussion of the “formalistic” interpretation of the antithesis (“Meaning,” 163–207). 5  Schneider, “Meaning,” distinguishes between the “formalistic” and the “realistic” interpretations of the antithesis: the “formalistic” sees the “letter” as the literal sense of Scripture, and the “spirit” as the spiritual, typical sense; the “realistic” interpretation sees the “letter” as the Mosaic law itself (not one sense of it), the “spirit” as the Holy Spirit, “the internal vivifying norm and principle of the Christian life” (164). The article is helpful in tracing representatives of both interpretations and in explaining the deficiencies of the former; but the division into two categories does not adequately cover the exegetical debate of today. Hence, though my own interpretation of the antithesis would no doubt be classified by Schneider as “realistic,” I prefer to develop that interpretation in contrast to a more broadly defined “hermeneutical” one. 6  Cf. Prat, Theology, 2.435–441; also Allo, Corinthiens, 103–111. 7  Cf. Prat, Theology, 2.440: the veil is present for “unbelieving Jews, who read the letter of the Law without grasping its spirit” (emphases original). 8  Cf. also Kamlah, “Buchstabe,” 276–282: “letter” is said to express Paul’s reproach against the Jews, “dass sie also das Alte Testament im Sinne dieser Weltzeit auslegen und deswegen nicht voll verstehen” (282; emphasis added). This is contrasted with the full understanding of Scripture, which is possible only when it is interpreted in the light of the cross of Christ.



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as an example: “[Paul] does not use ‘letter’ as a simple equivalent of ‘the law.’ ‘Letter’ is rather what the legalist is left with as a result of his misunderstanding and misuse of the law. It is the letter of the law in separation from the Spirit. But, since ‘the law is spiritual’ (v. 14), the letter of the law in isolation from the Spirit is not the law in its true character, but the law as it were denatured. It is this which is opposed to the Spirit whose presence is the true establishment of the law.”9 A discussion, both profound and programmatic, applying the antithesis to Pauline hermeneutics has been provided by Ernst Käsemann in his well-known article “The Spirit and the Letter.”10 It is clear enough that Bultmann’s interpretation of Paul’s understanding of the law in general and of Romans 7 in particular has provided Käsemann with a base; but in his argument that the letter-spirit antithesis provides the key to Pauline hermeneutics, Käsemann has carried the argument further in his own creative, and often moving, way. His views are worth recapitulating here. It should be noted at once that, though the emphasis of his article is certainly on the hermeneutical application of the letter-spirit antithesis, Käsemann seems aware that the primary meaning is another. In his discussion of Romans 2:27, “letter” is found to be equivalent to “the Mosaic Torah in its written documentation” (143). The term is said to be used only in eschatological declarations that have the Jewish doctrine of the two aeons as their background: Paul assigned it to the old aeon. In Romans 2:29, Paul speaks of a “real … circumcision performed by the spirit, which leaves behind the sphere of the letter, with its validity and power, and is contrasted with it”; it is “eschatologically realized in the Christian” (145–146). Similarly, in Romans 7:6, “the antithesis between spirit and letter is primarily related to anthropology,” marking as it does the “eschatological contrast of the two aeons” (146, my emphasis).Yet already in his discussion of the letter in Romans 7:6, the hermeneutical note that Käsemann finds in the antithesis is introduced. The “letter” here is again found, at least in a limited sense, to be identical with the Mosaic Torah; yet the “law” is said to possess a dialectic not found in the “letter.” The former, “in its origin and intention,” is “the sacred will of God”: letter, on the other hand, is law as it has been perverted by “Jewish interpretation and tradition” into a “demand for good works” (146–147). Hence, the “law” and the “letter” are “not identical fundamentally, but are 9 Cranfield, Romans, 1.339–340. Note, too, that Michel, in his commentary on Rom 7:6 (Römer, 222), interprets the letter-spirit antithesis as referring to the Jewish rabbinic and the early Christian understandings of Scripture, respectively. 10  Käsemann, “Spirit.” Page references alone are given for subsequent references to this work.

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so de facto because the Jewish reality as Paul sees it is dominated by the reality of the perverted law” (147). In 2 Corinthians 3:6, too, Käsemann notes “that the antithesis is in the first place the mark of Christian existence, i. e. it has anthropological bearings” (148). But the context shows that “the contrast of spirit and letter now coincides with the contrast between the old and new covenants,” while “the theme of the two covenants is expressly linked with the question of the interpretation of the Old Testament scriptures” (148–149). Here, too, the letter is said to represent “the actual, ruling perversion of the documented will of God” (154), the perversion of the law into a demand for works. It “kills because it forces man into the service of his own righteousness”; it delivers up the man who falls in with the demand for works “to the power of death by setting him at a distance from the creator who gives and receives” (150–151). This is then linked more directly with the way the Old Testament scriptures are understood. A veil is said to lie over the hearts of Jews when they read the scriptures, “in that they hear the words and interpret them out of their own exegetical and dogmatic tradition, namely from the law’s demand for good works as the kernel and meaning of scripture.” The law is rightly understood according to “its original divine intention” as “a promise of the new, eschatological obedience.” Scripture is to be read “in the light of Christ and as a preparation for him”; then “the spirit takes on a hermeneutical function.” The terms “letter” and “spirit” thus mark two possible ways of seeing Scripture: “under the veil of the Torah in its misunderstood character as a demand for good works”; or “in the light of the lifting of that veil through Christ, which is to say, practically speaking, from the angle of the message of justification” (155). The close relation between Käsemann’s interpretation of the letter-spirit antithesis and Bultmann’s interpretation of Paul’s understanding of the law is apparent.11 Käsemann distinguishes the original intention of the law from its current perversion as letter: he speaks of the law “in its origin and intention” as “the sacred will of God, which calls men to obedience” (146), but also of the perversion of the law into a demand for works. If Käsemann sees in the law a summons to obedience, Bultmann is inclined to express the matter in terms of a proper self-understanding: the commandment was given “for life” in that it ought to bring man’s “selfhood to reality”; but Bultmann, too, speaks of the law’s “perversion,” of the “possibility of misunderstanding”: “man, called to selfhood, tries to live out of his own strength and thus loses his self – his ‘life’ – and rushes into death.”12 Like 11 

The following discussion of Bultmann is based on his Theology. Theology 1.245–246. Page references alone are given for subsequent references to this work. 12 Bultmann,



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Käsemann, he speaks of the law as being “perverted” when man strives “after a ‘righteousness of his own’ through keeping the commandment” (267). This perversion is said to be “highly plausible” since, in the knowledge that transgression is sin, man could easily draw the conclusion that law observance procures “righteousness”; indeed, the misunderstanding seems to be intended by God in order to “lead man to death and thereby to let God appear as God” (267; emphasis original). If Käsemann understands the “letter” as this perversion of the law into a demand for good works, he is only developing what Bultmann has written: the letter “serves man as a means for that effort to win ‘righteousness’ and ‘life’ by his own strength through ‘works’ – that is, through what he accomplishes” (240).13 The background of these interpretations of the letter may be traced backwards a step further to Bultmann’s well-known treatment of Paul’s use of the word “flesh” (σάρξ). According to Bultmann, the attitude characteristic of the flesh is “the self-reliant attitude of the man who puts his trust in his own strength” (240), the “failure to acknowledge one’s own creatureliness” (232). It thus includes man’s attempts to fulfill the law in his own strength as well as his transgressions of it (239): indeed, the former receive the accent in Bultmann’s discussion of the “flesh.” Particularly controversial, and particularly significant for the understanding of the letter-spirit antithesis, is his discussion of Romans 7 in terms of the “perversion of human striving” (247).14 Bultmann follows Kümmel15 in seeing the speaker of Romans 7 as man under the law, though with insights gained after he has been freed from the law by Christ. The usual understanding of the speaker’s plight is that he is unable to fulfill the commandments of God, though he acknowledges them to be good. Bultmann disputes this, basing his argument on the fact that Paul elsewhere depicts Jewish sin typically as being, not the transgression of the law, but the attempt to fulfill the law in order to establish one’s own righteousness. Such a man is able to carry out the commands of the law; his dilemma is that he finds, even when he has fulfilled them, that he has not achieved16 “what I will,” that is, life, but only “what I do not will,” that is, death (Rom 7:15–20). Similarly, in Romans 7:7–13, according to Bultmann, Paul is speaking not only of the lust that transgresses the law as being 13 

Cf. also Schrage, Einzelgebote, 76. And note Hübner, Gesetz, 128–129. See Bultmann, “Romans 7,” 147–157. 15 Kümmel, Römer 7. 16  The verbs of “doing” in this passage (κατεργάζεσθαι , vv. 15, 17, 18, 20; ποιεῖν, vv. 15, 16, 19, 20, 21; πράσσειν,vv. 15, 19) are taken by Bultmann to refer not to empirical deeds (i. e., “do”), but to the result of doing (i. e., “bring about,” “reap”); cf. Theology 1.248. In his Theology, however, he allows for the possibility that the former sense may be intended. 14 

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provoked by the commandment, but also of the very zeal to fulfill the law in one’s own strength (for Bultmann, the word ἐπιθυμία in this passage at least includes such zeal) – a zeal that nonetheless leads to sin and death.17 Thus, the insight that, in Bultmann’s view, lies at the heart of Romans 7 is that “in serving the law the law’s true intention is in fact perverted.”18 This perversion of the law, as we have already seen, is essentially what Käsemann understands by the letter in Romans 7:6 and elsewhere. We must now turn to the Pauline texts themselves, and we may do it with the following questions in mind. Does Paul mean by the “letter” a perversion of the law of God? Is the “spirit” of the antithesis introduced as the guide to a right understanding of the scriptures? Does the “oldness of the letter” refer to the obsolescence of a misunderstanding of the law? Or is Paul speaking of the law itself, not as perverted by Jewish tradition, but as imposing obligations during one period of salvation-history that for the Christian are no longer binding?

The Pauline Texts 1. We begin with Romans 2:27–29. Unfortunately, our understanding of Paul’s meaning in these verses is dependent on our understanding of Romans 2 in its entirety, and that chapter is not without its difficulties. After denouncing typically heathen vices and arguing that those who commit them are without excuse, that they stand condemned under the wrath of God (1:18–32), Paul turns to the one who, while only too willing to join in the judgment of others, is guilty of the same sins (2:1–2). In 2:17, he names his imaginary interlocutor a Jew, and notes the things of which the Jew can boast: possession of the law of God, which embodies knowledge and truth; instruction in its precepts, which enables the Jew to play the role of leader for the blind, of light for those in darkness (vv. 17–20). Whatever Paul may say about Gentiles in this chapter, his real purpose is clearly to show that, in spite of undeniable advantages, the Jew no less than the Gentile stands “under sin,” an object of divine wrath (3:9; cf. 3:19). Jews no less than Gentiles will be judged according to their works, and approved only if these are found to be good (2:1–11). Since they possess the law, they will be judged 17  Cf.

Bultmann, “Romans 7,” 154; Theology 1.247–248, 265; and note his comments on another verse important to our subject: “When 2 Cor. 3.6 says: ‘for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life,’ there is no reflection in this context over the question whether the individual under the reign of Law brings death upon himself by transgressing the Law or by his zeal for it” (Theology 1.247). 18  Bultmann, “Romans 7,” 156.



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according to the law (2:12); transgressions will nullify the benefits of their election (2:25). Now, while it is true that Torah for a Jew includes more than the commandments, when Paul introduces the “law” into the argument of Romans 2, he is thinking specifically of its commands, the obligation of those who have received the commands to observe them, and the sanctions with which, should they violate the commands, they will be confronted as transgressors. Those not subject to the law will be judged independently of it, but those under obligation to observe its demands (i. e., those ἐν νόμῳ) will be judged accordingly (v. 12). When Paul contrasts the “hearers” and the “doers” of the law, he obviously means hearers and doers of what the law commands (v. 13). Similarly, the verbs used transitively with the “law” (or “the things of the law,” v. 14; “the demands of the law,” v. 26) – “do” (ποιεῖν, v. 14; πράσσειν, v. 25), “keep” (φυλάσσειν, v. 26), “fulfill” (τελεῖν, v. 27) – and the references to “transgression” (παράβασις, v. 23) and “transgressor” (παραβάτης, vv. 25, 27) of the law all show that Paul means by the “law” Torah’s commands. Possession of the law means familiarity with the will of God, with the right course of action; it is shown by an ability to teach others specific commandments (vv. 17–22). It is important to notice, too, the nature of Paul’s charge in this chapter. Here he is concerned, not with the inadequacy of the “righteousness of the law,” nor with any misunderstanding of the law’s true purpose,19 but rather with the responsibility of the Jew (his imaginary interlocutor) to measure up to the law’s specific demands: Do you steal, commit adultery, rob temples (2:21–22)? If, on your account, the name of God is blasphemed among the heathen, it is not because Gentiles realize that your perfect fulfillment of the law’s demands has blinded you to your dependence on God, but simply because your manifest transgressions of the law (v. 23; cf. vv. 25, 27) bring dishonor to the God whose elect you claim to be. All this is critical for our understanding of διὰ γράμματος in verse 27. The physically uncircumcised who keep the law will condemn the Jew who, διὰ γράμματος καὶ περιτομῆς, is a transgressor of the law. In this context, γράμμα cannot refer to the misunderstanding of the law shown by those who observe its statutes perfectly in order to establish their own righteousness. No such misunderstanding is in view. The issue here is the observance, or failure to observe, what the law, by any reading, demands; and the Jewish transgressor of the law διὰ γράμματος καὶ περιτομῆς is contrasted, not with 19  Note, however, Barrett’s interpretation (Romans, 57–59): when Paul says that the Jew transgresses the law, he means that, in boasting of his circumcision, the Jew forgets his creaturely status and thus sins against the real purpose of the law. But Paul shows clearly enough in 2:1–3, 8, 21–24 that he is thinking of manifest transgressions, which even the circumcised commit.

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one who understands the true nature of the law or circumcision, but with the Gentile who observes the righteous demands of the law though possessing neither the books of the law (cf. v. 14) nor physical circumcision (v. 26). Hence, in this verse at least, “letter” is an abbreviated way of referring, not to a perverted understanding of the commands of God, but simply to their possession in written form: a possession, however, that in Paul’s view carries with it the obligation of observance, and sanctions to be imposed if the commandments are transgressed. The genitive with διά must indicate attendant circumstance, not instrument:20 the uncircumcised keeper of the law will condemn “you who, though having the letter and circumcision, are a transgressor of the law.” Neither the “letter” nor circumcision is here considered a liability. If there is a negative ring to the words διὰ γράμματος καὶ περιτομῆς, it is due to the fact that it is only the possession of the scrolls of the law, and only physical circumcision, that the Jew in question can claim in his favor. We may compare verse 20: “having the form (μόρφωσιν) of knowledge and truth in the law.” The choice of the word “letter,” like that of “form” in verse 20, does indeed stress that it is only the written scrolls, the external form, that the Jew in question possesses, while he lacks the righteous observance to which possession of the “letter” obligates; but the fault lies in what he lacks, not in what he possesses. In verse 26, Paul presses the logic of his argument to its conclusion: just as the (physical) circumcision of the Jew will be disregarded if he transgresses the law, so the (physical) uncircumcision of the Gentile will be disregarded if he keeps it. Nothing suggests that Paul is here thinking of Gentile converts to Christianity. And logically, the same should apply to verses 28–29 as well: being a true Jew is not a matter of physical appearance, but of an inner reality of which God alone is the judge. Circumcision that is only “in the flesh” is not true circumcision; true circumcision is a matter of the heart, and may be a reality even for one who is not literally circumcised. In the context, circumcision ἐν πνεύματι and that ἐν γράμματι should mark the distinction between a true observance of the commandments of God and physical circumcision, which, indeed, as the sign of the covenant, carries with it the requirement that its commands be fulfilled, but which hardly guarantees that they will be. In speaking of the “circumcision of the heart,” Paul would then merely be picking up a theme found already in Scripture (Deut 10:16; 30:6; Jer 4:4; cf. Lev 26:41; Jer 9:25 [Eng. trans., 9:26]; Ezek 44:7, 9) and common enough up to his own day (cf. 1QpHab XI.13; Jub. 1:23; Philo, Spec. Laws 1.304–305, etc.); no reference to the new era of salvationhistory brought by Christ need be implied. This gives satisfactory sense, and preserves the logic of Paul‘s argument: if we see in verse 29 a reference 20 

Cf. Bauer, Lexicon, 179. Note the similar usage in Rom 4:11.



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to the “circumcision” by which the Spirit of God brings the convert to Christianity into the community of believers (cf. Col 2:11), we anticipate the turning-point in the argument found in 3:21, where righteousness by faith is introduced. On the other hand, the letter-spirit antithesis in 7:6 and 2 Corinthians 3:6 does clearly point to two epochs of salvation-history; and though, of course, Paul was not bound to use the antithesis in the same way on every occasion,21 an interpretation that shows a consistent usage is perhaps to be preferred. Further, it is perhaps doubtful whether Paul could use words like περιτομὴ … ἐν πνεύματι without thinking of the Spirit of God as the mark of the new age. Hence, Käsemann may well be right in suggesting that Paul, in verses 28–29, has passed from “mere possibilities and hypotheses … to eschatological reality,” and that he here speaks of Christians.22 In any case, one aspect of the interpretation of verse 29 seems clear and is important for our purposes. No more than “letter” in verse 27 are we to understand circumcision (ἐν) γράμματι in verse 29 as in itself negative. On the contrary, Paul stresses in this context that physical circumcision does have value (2:25; 3:1–2), though, of course, the Jew who is so circumcised must be “circumcised in heart” as well if he is to be praised by God. In both verses 27 and 29, we are dealing with real benefits (the possession of the written scrolls of the law and physical circumcision) that the Jew automatically possesses, but that entail the obligation to fulfill the commands of the law: should that obligation not be met, the benefits are of no value. The following two conclusions about the usage of “letter” and “spirit” in Romans 2 seem legitimate. First, “letter” in Romans 2:27 does not refer to a particular interpretation of the law, but to the possession of God’s commands in written form. The possession of the commands may, however, be accompanied by a false security, as though possession without observance were sufficient for divine approval; Paul maintains on the contrary that possession of the commands carries with it the duty to observe them. Second, and similarly, circumcision that is (ἐν) γράμματι in verse 29 does not refer to a particular interpretation of circumcision, but simply to circumcision in a physical, external form. The possession of physical circumcision, too, may be accompanied by a false security, as though possession of the mark of the covenant without observance of the terms to which it obligates were sufficient for divine approval; Paul maintains that it is not. Physical circumcision is contrasted with circumcision ἐν πνεύματι, which may or may not be meant to refer to the mark of the new age. In any 21 

22 

Cf. Dodd, “Problems,” 110–111. Käsemann, “Spirit,” 146.

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case, it speaks of an inner reality that is not content with external forms, whatever limited legitimacy the latter may possess. 2. When, in Romans 7:6, “spirit” and “letter” are again contrasted, it is apparent that the two terms are related to different epochs of salvation-history: the “oldness of the letter” has given way to the “newness of the spirit.” But we can be more specific: both phrases qualify the infinitive δουλεύειν; hence, “letter” and “spirit” mark the different ways of rendering service that characterize the old and the new dispensations respectively. But if we are to define more precisely what Paul with these words intends to say about believers’ situation before and after their incorporation into the death and resurrection of Christ, we must briefly consider part of the argument in the middle chapters of Romans. Sin and death entered the world through Adam’s transgression, his violation of a concrete command (5:12–14). The period from Adam until Moses was marked by both sin and death even though, in the absence of law, the wrongs committed could not properly be considered transgressions (5:13; cf. 4:15).23 With Moses, the law was given. Paul obviously understands this to mean that concrete demands were imposed upon the law’s recipients: certain actions were commanded, others were forbidden. Only so could the law transform wrong-doing (ἁμαρτία) into transgression (παράβασις), that is, a violation of specific commands (4:15). The law served the purpose of “increasing transgression” (5:20). We may compare Galatians 3:19: the law was added “for the sake of transgressions.” Clearly, Paul is not concerned in Romans 4:15 or 5:12–14 with the misunderstanding involved in a zeal to fulfill the commandments for the purpose of establishing one’s own righteousness, but rather with actual transgressions of the law, and with the law’s purpose of accentuating the wrong involved.24 The same is true of Romans 6. Far from speaking here of a misguided zeal to observe the law as being characteristic of life “under the law,” Paul describes a time when the “members” of his readers were “instruments of unrighteousness to sin” (6:13) and in bondage to “uncleanness and lawlessness” (v. 19), when they did things of which they now are ashamed (v. 21). The “sin” that is not to master them because they are not under the law (6:14; the phrase implies that such sin normally accompanies life “under the law”) is certainly, as the sequel shows, not a desire to establish their own righteousness by observing statutes, but lawless and shameful activities that a freedom from the obligation to observe statutes might seem to encourage. The same note continues into chapter 7, as 7:5, with its reference to “the 23  24 

Cf. Linton, “Juridiken,” 179–180. Cf. Wilckens, “Werken,” 83.



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passions of sin, which are by the law,” indicates.25 Romans 7:7–13 is, I think, most naturally understood as a clarification of this cryptic remark in 7:5. The context at any rate prepares us for an explanation of how the commands lead to a bondage to palpable sin, how they occasion sinful passion, not how they incite a nomistic zeal to fulfill the commands. This is confirmed by a closer look at the verses in question (7:7–13). Too much emphasis has been placed on the fact that Paul speaks of “desire” (ἐπιθυμία) being roused without defining the matter more closely; it has been suggested26 that his words include not only the transgression of coveting, but also the “desire” of the pious Jew to fulfill the law. But Paul is clearly citing the Decalogue in verse 7 (cf. ὁ νόμος ἔλεγεν), so that the commandment οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις must be understood as the prohibition of covetousness. When Paul then speaks of πᾶσα ἐπιθυμία as being the response prompted by sin to this commandment (v. 8), he is surely thinking of covetousness for all manner of things rather than deliberately including a nomistic desire to fulfill the command. Paul has said that the command of God increased the evil of wrongs that would have been committed in any case by making them transgressions against the law of God. Here he adds that the command actually provided sin with the opportunity to stimulate the lust for what it forbids (7:7–11), and in this way proved to be the springboard for sinful passions (7:5). Thus, the commandment, which is good, has in fact led, albeit indirectly, to death (v. 10) – not because the law has been obeyed in an attempt to establish one’s own righteousness, but because the law has been transgressed. Such an argument is a logical sequel to what was said in Romans 6:1–7:5: to be “under the law” – even though it is the holy law of God – means in practice nothing less than to be the “servant of sin” (6:16–17, 20), and to produce the fruit that leads to death (7:5); for sin uses the command in order to arouse sinful desires (7:7–13). Furthermore, this leads naturally into what Paul says about the human situation under the law in 7:14–25:27 people’s actual behavior is determined, not by their knowledge of what is right or even their will to do it, but by sin, which dwells within them (7:17, 20; cf. v. 23), and which causes them to transgress the law whose goodness 25 

Cf. Bultmann, Theology 1.239. Cf. Bultmann, “Romans 7,” 154; Theology 1.247–248; Bornkamm, Experience, 90; Käsemann, An die Römer, 186. 27 Bultmann’s interpretation of these verses, too, proves unsatisfactory: partly because the verses that precede prepare us for a discussion involving the actual transgression of concrete commandments, not the nomist who fulfills the commands; but primarily because Bultmann’s interpretation does violence to the terminology used by Paul; cf. Althaus, Menschen, 47–49; also Kümmel, Bild, 191 n. 69 (supplemented, 220) and the literature there mentioned. 26 

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they acknowledge. Finally, this allows us to see Paul’s use of the letter-spirit antithesis in 7:6 in its true perspective. The sin spoken of in the context involves, as we have seen, the transgression of the law of God – “sinful passions” and “covetousness” – not a nomistic desire to fulfill it. Our passage does not speak of the misunderstanding of the legalist, but of the sin that inevitably results when a human being “in the flesh” is confronted by the demands of God. Hence, serving God by the “letter” should refer, not to the attempt to establish one’s own righteousness, but to the obligation of those “under the law” to carry out the concrete commands of the law of God – a situation that in fact led to obvious sin and death. This conclusion based on a study of the general progression of Paul’s argument in these chapters is confirmed by a closer look at 7:1–6. As in Romans 2, it is clear that when Paul speaks of the “law” in these verses, he is thinking of the commands of Torah. The person over whom “the law rules” (7:1) is the one who lives within the sphere where the demands of the law are binding, and where sanctions are brought to bear on transgressors; what is here discussed is how death provides a passage from such a sphere to one of freedom from the law’s demands and sanctions. As an illustration, Paul refers to the married woman who is subject to the law prohibiting extramarital sexual relations: though she is rightly labeled an “adulteress” should she transgress that law as long as she is subject to it, death pro­ vides an escape from the sphere of the law, permitting her to marry another (vv. 2–3). This is then applied to Christians in verse 4: they have died to the law, leaving the sphere where its demands are binding and transgressions are punished, and have entered the sphere of Christ. As we have seen, and as Paul’s argument in the verses that follow shows, the person subject to the law in fact finds that its demands lead to sinful passions; but Christians have been released from the law, have died to that which previously bound them (7:6). In summarizing this argument by saying that Christians no longer serve “in the old way of the letter,” Paul must mean that they no longer live in the sphere where the law’s demands are binding and enforced. Being “under the law” had paradoxically led to the service of sin; freedom from the law is accompanied by freedom from the bondage to sin. Now the Spirit of God who raised Christ from the dead lives in believers (cf. 8:9–11), replacing sin as the indwelling power determining their behavior (cf. 7:17, 20), and enabling them to bear the fruit of righteousness. This new way of serving is summed up with the words δουλεύειν ἡμᾶς ἐν καινότητι πνεύματος. “Letter” and “spirit” thus represent here a person’s service under the old and new covenants, respectively. “Letter” refers to the concrete demands of the Mosaic law, demands that God’s people were bound to obey, but that in fact resulted in a bondage to sin and death. “Spirit” refers to the Spirit of



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God whose fruit-bearing power from within has replaced obligation to the laws of Torah:28 the result is righteousness and life. It must be emphasized that serving God “in the new way of the Spirit” replaces service “in the old way of the letter”; it is not added to it. It is thus not the case that believers who have died to the law are still under obligation to fulfill its concrete commands though they are now empowered by God’s Spirit to do so; rather, the obligation to carry out the demands, an obligation that marked the old covenant, has been replaced by serving through the Spirit (“serving in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the letter”). Again, it is not simply that believers are not to seek justification by the deeds of the law,29 nor simply that they have been freed from the condemnation that hangs over transgressors.30 The contrast between letter and spirit is here applied to the kind of service (note δουλεύειν, v. 6) they are called upon to render. This conclusion is confirmed by a number of passages in the Pauline letters, some of which will be considered below. We may summarize the argument to this point. In Romans 2:27, the “letter” represents the law of God in the concrete, written form in which it was available to, and binding on, the Jew. In verse 29, circumcision by the “letter” refers to physical circumcision, which certainly carries with it the obligation to observe the commands of the old covenant, but implies nothing about their satisfactory fulfillment; circumcision by the “spirit” refers to the true observance of the demands of God, though it is not clear whether or not Paul is thinking specifically of the spiritual circumcision of the Christian. In Romans 7:6, the terms “letter” and “spirit” do clearly mark the difference between the old dispensation and the new in terms of the type of service rendered: obligation to the laws of Torah (which was also implied by the “letter” in Romans 2) as opposed to service by God’s Spirit. Common to the passages we have seen thus far is the divinely given, but limited role assigned to the “letter.” The possession of the commands of God and physical circumcision did have a part in the divine economy, though Paul’s argument makes it clear that they did not lead to salvation. Paul means seriously that those who lived under the law were obligated to fulfill the “letter.”31 He is, of course, adamant in his denial that justification could be achieved in this way; still, the limited purpose of the law could 28  This, of course, does not mean that Torah has nothing to say to the Christian; Paul still cites it as ἡ γραφή, and draws lessons from it. It simply means that the obligation to fulfill the laws of Torah, an obligation that marked the old covenant, does not apply to those under the new. 29  So, e. g., Moule, “Obligation,” 389–406. But see the comments of Bruce, “Law,” 266. 30  So, e. g., Cranfield, “Law,” 54–65. 31  Cf. the comments of Longenecker, Paul, 125–127 on the nature of the law as “contractual obligation” under the old covenant.

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only be achieved if those who were under its yoke were in fact obligated to observe all of its terms. This is certainly suggested by his references to the (now obsolete) obedience to the “letter”; it is confirmed by such texts as Galatians 3:10 and 5:3. The “letter” could not save, but was to be observed; now, when salvation through faith has been revealed, the Christian is no longer obligated to observe the “letter.” 3. The contrast between letter and spirit occurs in 2 Corinthians 3:6 as well: “[God] has made us fit to be ministers of a new covenant, [ministers] not of the letter, but of the Spirit.32 For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Even apart from what we have seen in Romans 7, it is clear that Paul here uses the antithesis to refer to two different ways of rendering service. In verse 6, the ministers (διάκονοι) of the new covenant are contrasted with those of the old: those who served under the old covenant are called “ministers of the letter”; Paul claims to be a “minister of the Spirit.” In the verses that follow, he develops the contrast between the two “ministries” (ἡ διακονία τοῦ θανατοῦ … ἡ διακονία τοῦ πνεύματος), noting in particular the greater glory attached to that of the Spirit, its abiding quality, and the “boldness” (παρρησία) that characterizes his ministry but not that of Moses. Here, as in Romans 7, then, “letter” and “spirit” express, not two ways of reading Scripture,33 but the essence of service under the two covenants. Indeed, the view that the “letter” refers to a “perversion,” a “misunderstanding” of the Mosaic law, seems incompatible with the language Paul uses. It is true that its ministry was one of death (v. 7) and condemnation (v. 9), but this accords well with what we have seen in Romans about the situation of those obligated to fulfill the demands of Torah. On the other hand, the reference to the “ministry of death carved in letters on stone” 32 Grammatically, the genitives γράμματος and πνεύματος could be dependent on either διακόνους or διαθήκης. But the fact that Rom 7:6 speaks of the “letter” and the “spirit” as two different ways of serving suggests that here it is Paul’s ministry (i. e., διακόνους) rather than the covenant that takes the genitives. This is confirmed in the verses that follow, where the “letter” that kills (v. 6) becomes the “ministry” (διακονία) of death carved in letters on stone” (v. 7; cf. v. 9), and the “spirit” of v. 6 becomes the “ministry” of the spirit in v. 8. Cf. Plummer, Corinthians, 88. 33  This remains true in spite of the references to the reading of the old covenant and the “veil” said to be present when Jews read it, 3:14–15. The point of the passage is not that Jews fail to perceive the deeper significance of the scriptures, nor that they pervert them into a demand for good works, but that they fail to perceive that the period of the old covenant has passed. Notice in particular the frequent uses of forms of καταργεῖν (vv. 7, 11, 13, 14). The purpose of the “veil,” according to v. 13, was to keep the Israelites from looking εἰς τὸ τέλος τοῦ καταργουμένου; presumably we are to see here a reference to the passing of the old dispensation itself (cf. Barrett, Corinthians, 119). “This same veil,” i. e., that which conceals the transitory nature of the old covenant, is present when Jews read the scriptures even today, so that they do not see “that in Christ it is being abolished” (v. 14). See further Bläser, Gesetz, 207–213.



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(v. 7) would seem more naturally to refer to the concrete demands of the law, which were so inscribed, than to a perversion of them. The very reference to a “ministry” (διακονία) and a “covenant” (διαθήκη) of which Moses was a representative seems to preclude the possibility that a perversion of that covenant is meant. And Paul repeatedly notes that the old ministry was accompanied by a display of divine glory. To be sure, that glory passed away, indicating the transitory nature of the old covenant; but Paul would scarcely have spoken in these terms had he meant that the ministry of the letter was itself based on a misunderstanding. On the contrary, the only misunderstanding referred to here is the failure to realize that the period of the old covenant and its ministry has passed, giving way to that of the Spirit. In referring to a new covenant, Paul is, of course, alluding to the promise in Jeremiah 31:31–34 by which a new covenant would be made “with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” God’s law would be written on their hearts, so that they would not need any instruction in the ways of the Lord. Admittedly, the passage in Jeremiah does not speak of the new covenant as being “of the spirit” (cf., however, Ezek 36:26–27). But Paul finds an important parallel between Jeremiah’s reference to an old and new covenant and his own interpretation of life under the law and under faith: the laws of the old covenant were written on tablets of stone; the righteousness of the new is the product, not of adherence to a written code, but of obedience to a divine impulse from within. Here we may conclude our study of the Pauline texts. We have seen in Romans 2:27; 7:6; and 2 Corinthians 3:6 that Paul uses the “letter” to represent the law of God in its written form, made up of concrete commands. As the law of God, it is holy, righteous, and good; its precepts were to be obeyed by those “under the law.” But attempts to fulfill it could not lead to justification – nor were they intended to do so. Rather, the law served the purpose (and here we may borrow the imagery of Gal 3:23–4:5) of a harsh guardian, bringing the knowledge of sin and increasing its sinfulness, until the Son of God came to redeem those who were under its yoke. They serve God now, not by complying with the “letter,” but by deriving strength and guidance from the divine Spirit within them. The usage of the antithesis in Romans 2:29 falls somewhat outside this pattern, referring as it does to circumcision rather than directly to divine service. But here, too, the antithesis may well reflect the change from the old dispensation to the new. Certainly, it contrasts the limited legitimacy of an obligation divinely imposed but not itself sufficient for divine approval with a righteousness praised by God.

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Letter-Spirit and Pauline Ethics It has become apparent that the letter-spirit antithesis has nothing to do with Pauline hermeneutics. In no case do the terms refer to an inadequate and an adequate way of reading the sacred scriptures; rather, they are used of one’s obligation to God under the old and new dispensations. The letterspirit antithesis is thus the key to Pauline ethics, not Pauline hermeneutics. In what follows, I will briefly comment on a few other passages that confirm the correctness of such an approach to Pauline ethics, and note a few implications that our antithesis has for that subject. 1. The Jew, according to Paul, is “under the law” (1 Cor 9:20); the Christian is not (Rom 6:14; 1 Cor 9:20). What does Paul mean by the phrase? Those who insist that the demands of the law are still binding on the Christian are compelled to understanding it as meaning “under the law’s curse,” or “attempting to observe the law in order to be justified,”34 and the like. Yet a look at the passages in which it is used indicates that Paul is referring to the obligation to observe the commands of the law. It is true that such an obligation leads those “in the flesh” into bondage to sin and places them under a curse, and that, at times, the phrase may carry with it connotations of this whole desperate situation (cf. Gal 4:5). But the primary meaning is clear enough in 1 Corinthians 9:20: “among those under the law [i. e., obligated to observe its commands], I acted as though I were under the law – though I am not under the law – in order that I might win those under the law.” In saying that he acted as though he were “under the law,” Paul does not mean that he behaved as though he were in bondage to sin, or under a divine curse, or under the illusion that he had to keep the law in order to be justified; he simply means that, in order not to offend those obligated to observe the statutes of the law of God, he himself acted as though he were bound by the same duty, though in fact, he insists, he is not. This appears to affirm our interpretation of the letter-spirit antithesis: believers have been freed from an obligation that applied to Jews under the old dispensation, that of observing the demands of the law; they are to serve God in a new way. 2. In 1 Corinthians 9:20, Paul points out that he is not obligated to observe the law’s demands. That he felt no such obligation is apparent at a number of points in his letters. Anyone obligated to observe the law’s demands must recognize that some food is clean, other food unclean (Leviticus 11; Deut 14:3–21). Paul does not: “I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean of itself” (Rom 14:14). The law demands that the seventh day each week be kept holy, and that other festival days be observed as well. 34 

E. g., Moule, “Obligation,” 394–395.



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For Paul, such observance is entirely optional: “One person distinguishes one day from another, another person holds every day in equal esteem; let each be persuaded in their own mind” (14:5). It is not clear what “days and months and seasons and years” the Galatians were observing (Gal 4:10). But it is certain that observances of that kind are prescribed by the Mosaic law, and equally certain that Paul regards such observance as belonging to the period of human bondage to which the Christian is not to revert (Gal 4:9– 11; cf. Col 2:16–17). Here it might be objected that, while Paul does not believe the Christian is to observe the ceremonial law, he does believe the Christian is obligated to observe its moral commands.35 Were that the case, however, Paul would have had to provide his churches with detailed instructions as to which commands they were obligated to observe, and which they were not: this was obviously a very important matter! But there is no evidence that he made any such distinctions. On the contrary, it is clear that, for Paul, Torah was a unit.36 On this point, he did not differ from the Pharisees: the person who is obligated to observe the law is obligated to observe its every precept (cf. m. Avot 2:1; 4:2). That, for Paul, is true of the person who is under the law (cf. Gal 5:3); it is not true of the Christian. 3. Paul concedes the truth of the slogan “Everything is permitted me” (1 Cor 6:12; 10:23), even though he is quick to point out its inadequacies as a guideline for Christian behavior: without restricting the field of what is permitted, he adds that not everything is profitable or edifying, and that some practices would lead to a new bondage. Both the slogan itself and Paul’s non-legal way of qualifying it clearly indicate that the Christian is not thought to be obligated to fulfill the demands of the law. The law, after all, forbids as well as commands; of no one subject to its demands can it be said that everything is permitted. 4. Though believers are free from obligation to the law, they are obviously not free to engage in any type of activity whatever. They are servants of God (cf. Rom 6:22). Indeed, in studying the letter-spirit antithesis, we have seen that the new covenant introduces a new type of service. Thus, it certainly does not remove the obligation to serve God, to do his will. But what is significant here is the way in which that will is defined. A comparison of the references to the divine will in Romans 2:18 and 12:2 confirms our conclu35 

E. g., Cranfield, “Law,” 67; Wendland, Ethik, 57. Linton, “Juridiken,” 178, and especially Bläser, Gesetz, 41–44. Bläser rightly points out (228–229) that the question raised in Rom 6:15 and the exhortation of Gal 5:13 would be meaningless had Paul meant by Christian freedom only a release from the law’s ritual demands. 36  Cf.

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sions.37 Jews who are “under the law” know the will of God and are able to “discern what really matters” because they are “instructed in the law”; the proper course of behavior in any situation may be found by consulting the relevant statute in Torah. No such concrete formula, however, is available for Christians. They discern the will of God by presenting themselves to God, by refusing to pattern their way of life after that of this age, by being transformed through the renewal of their minds. They “discern what really matters” (the same phrase as in Rom 2:18 is used of the Christian in Phil 1:9–10) when their love grows in knowledge and judgment. The fact that, whereas the will of God for Jews was found in the statutes of Torah, Christians must discover it for themselves as their minds are “renewed” and they grow in “insight” shows clearly that the will of God is no longer defined as an obligation to fulfill the law. 5. Paul does speak at times of the law’s demands as being fulfilled by the Christian (cf. Rom 8:4; 13:8, 10; Gal 5:14).38 Two things must be noted. First, Paul clearly means that such fulfillment is not the result of an obligation to observe the demands of the law, but the inevitable outcome of a life lived under the direction of the Spirit of God. To the extent that what the law demands is the righteousness of God, the Spirit of God will obviously lead the believer in the direction of those demands; but the Christian’s duty is defined in terms of following the Spirit and not in terms of observing statutes (Gal 5:16, 18).39 Second, when Paul does relate Christian righteousness to the demands of the law, he does not say that Christians “do” or “observe” those demands. It is the person living under the law who must “do” what it commands (Rom 2:25–26; 10:5; Gal 3:10; 5:3; 6:13). When Paul speaks of the righteousness of the Christian, he speaks more indirectly of a “fulfilling” of the law, thus taking into account that the life of the Christian does show the righteousness that the law is all about without implying that the Christian does each of its precepts. 6. This brings us to a final, much discussed matter. In speaking of the “letter,” Paul has in mind the obligation to fulfill the demands of Torah, an obligation that marked the old covenant. Nonetheless, the form that the antithesis takes, contrasting an obligation to observe concrete commands with that of letting the life of the indwelling divine Spirit come to expression, invites a further question: in Paul’s thinking, can Christian service 37 

Cf. Weiss, History, 2.556; Furnish, Theology, 188–189. Cf. Gerhardsson, “Ethos,” 57–58. 39  According to Bläser, Gesetz, 42–43, the law is quoted in passages like Rom 13:8–10 only when its content is in accord with the demands of Christ; it is because love is in accord with those demands, not because it is commanded in Torah, that it is required of the Christian. 38 



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ever be defined as a duty to observe concrete commands imposed from without? Can the place once occupied by the law of Moses be occupied by any other legal code? Here we must of course beware of being more “Pauline” than the apostle himself! It is all too easy to draw systematic conclusions that seem to be implied in Paul’s letters, but that in fact go further than Paul himself ever went. And certainly any conclusion made at this point must be considered in the light of the paraenetic passages of Paul’s letters,40 and of his use of the Lord’s commands in such texts as 1 Corinthians 7:10–11; 9:14. But the following factors should be borne in mind. i. Paul never suggests that the law of Moses was inadequate or could be improved upon as a code stating the demands of God:41 the suggestion would undoubtedly have appalled him. It is the law of God; its demands are holy (Rom 7:12). Hence, if the Christian is not under the law given by God to Moses, it is scarcely because that law has been replaced by a code more in keeping with the divine will. ii. The Mosaic law nonetheless represents for Paul a set of commands imposed from without on human beings in the “flesh” who, as such, are not inclined to submit to God’s will (Rom 8:7–8). On the other hand, those who have “died” to sin (and to the law! [Rom 6:1–11; 7:4, 6; Gal 2:19]), who have “crucified the flesh” (Gal 5:24), who are (in one sense) no longer “in the flesh” (Rom 7:5; 8:9), and who enjoy new life in the Spirit (Rom 8:5–14; Gal 5:25): these “new creatures in Christ” (2 Cor 5:17) no longer encounter God’s will in the form of demands imposed from without on rebellious subjects. Their service of God must be defined differently than as obligation to law (so understood). iii. In fact, Paul was by no means either the first or the only Jew to believe that, in the day of God’s salvation, the hearts of God’s people would be so taught by God that other direction would not be needed (Isa 54:13; Jer 31:33–34; John 6:45; 1 John 2:27). iv. According to Romans 5–7, the giving of the law made human wrongdoing “more sinful,” partly because the latter took on the character of transgression against the commands of God, and partly because sin was given the opportunity to arouse in rebellious hearts the desire for what is forbidden. These results, it should be noted, do not spring from any peculiarities of the law of Moses, but are inherent in any situation where a would-be autonomous person is obligated to obey specific commands imposed from without. Acceptable service must be of a different kind.

40  41 

Cf. especially Schrage, Einzelgebote. Cf. Linton, “Juridiken,” 177.

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v. Paul cannot provide any ready formula for the discovery of the will of God, as he could have done had that will involved the observance of a code of statutes. He prays simply that his spiritual children will grow in their ability to discern the “good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Rom 12:2; cf. Phil 1:9–11). Pauline paraenesis cannot be treated adequately here. The following observations do, it seems to me, point the way to such a treatment. i. The Christian remains the servant of God, and is to follow the guidance of the divine Spirit. Such guidance is real: Paul has no trouble pointing out some areas of possible human behavior that are incompatible with the leading of the holy Spirit of God (1 Cor 6:15–20; 12:3; Gal 5:16–21; 1 Thess 4:3–8), and other directions in which the Spirit inevitably leads (Gal 5:22– 23). But unlike statutory law, which is specific in what is and what is not to be done, Paul is largely content to point to the character and virtues consistent with a Spirit-led life, leaving the individual to discern what behavior in specific situations is consistent with that character and those virtues. ii. Though all believers possess the Spirit (Rom 8:9), instruction remains in order: partly because, as long as they are (in one sense) “in the flesh” (cf. 2 Cor 10:3; Gal 2:20), their faith is in danger of failing as they are exposed to temptation;42 partly because the “immature” and “weak” naturally need the encouragement and guidance of those stronger and more mature. iii. Paul feels a divinely given responsibility to provide such encouragement and guidance, an authority entrusted to him to “build up” the faith of his converts (2 Cor 10:8; 13:10). iv. Paul exercises that responsibility in ways consistent with his view that Christian righteousness is a matter of walking in the Spirit, not of complying with externally imposed commands: by taking care not to give the impression that he is a dictator over others’ faith (2 Cor 1:24; 8:8; 1 Thess 2:7; Phlm 8–9; and note Rom 1:11–12);43 by pointing out that the basis of his instruction is his possession of the Spirit of God (1 Cor 7:40);44 by asking his readers, since they themselves have received the Spirit, to acknowledge that his directives come from the Lord (1 Cor 14:37; cf. Rom 15:14; Phil 3:15), to participate in the reasoning that leads to his conclusions,45 or even to judge them for themselves (1 Cor 10:15; 11:13); by insisting that he is 42 

Cf. Bornkamm, Experience, 80–82. See Holmberg, Paul and Power, 84–85 for a discussion of cases where Paul apparently leaves it up to his readers to decide between alternative courses of action, though he clearly believes one alternative is to be preferred. 44  Similarly, those responsible for exhortation in the local church do so, according to Paul, on the basis of a charisma of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:7–8, 11; cf. Rom 12:6–8). The contrast with Pharisaism, where trained experts in the law provide guidance as to the proper course of behavior, also witnesses to the change from letter-service to Spirit-service. 45  Cf. Campenhausen, Begründung, 20; Holmberg, Paul and Power, 189. 43 



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merely reminding them of what they already know (Rom 15:15; 1 Cor 4:17);46 and so on. All this marks a significant shift from Paul’s thinking as a Pharisee. Then the will of God meant complying with the terms of the statutes of Torah as they were interpreted and applied by Pharisaic scribes.47 Now the “letter” is assigned to the past in the belief that the age of the Spirit has come. It would, I suggest, be difficult to find a better starting-point for a study of Pauline ethics than the letter-spirit antithesis. But it is essential that we understand the antithesis as Paul himself intended it, marking not two ways of reading Scripture, but the ways of service enjoined under the old dispensation and the new. Bibliography Allo, E. B. Seconde épître aux Corinthiens. Paris: Gabalda, 1956. Althaus, Paul. Paulus und Luther über den Menschen. Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1963. Barrett, C. K. A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. London: A. & C. Black, 1957. – A Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. London: A. & C. Black, 1973. Bauer, Walter. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. Translated and adapted by William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957. Bläser, Peter. Das Gesetz bei Paulus. Münster: Aschendorff, 1941. Bornkamm, Günther. Early Christian Experience. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. Bruce, F. F. “Paul and the Law of Moses.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 57 (1974–1975): 259–279. Bultmann, Rudolf. “Romans 7 and the Anthropology of Paul.” In Bultmann, Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolf Bultmann. New York: Meridian, 1960, 147–157. – Theology of the New Testament. Vol. 1. London: SCM, 1952. Campenhausen, Hans von. Die Begründung kirchlicher Entscheidungen beim Apostel Paulus. Heidelberg: Winter, 1957. Cohen, Boaz. “Letter and Spirit in Jewish and Roman Law.” In Cohen, Jewish and Roman Law: A Comparative Study, Vol. 1. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1966, 31–57. – “Letter and Spirit in the New Testament.” In Cohen, Jewish and Roman Law: A Comparative Study, Vol. 1. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1966, 58–64. Cranfield, C. E. B. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Vol. 1. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975. – “St. Paul and the Law.” Scottish Journal of Theology 17 (1964): 43–68. 46 

Cf. Dahl, Memory, 15. have treated the Pharisaic view of law in some detail in my Jesus and Scribal Authority, 12–52. 47  I

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Dahl, Nils Alstrup. Jesus in the Memory of the Early Church. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1976. Dodd, C. H. “New Testament Translation Problems II.” The Bible Translator 28 (1977): 101–116. Furnish, Victor Paul. Theology and Ethics in Paul. Nashville: Abingdon, 1968. Gerhardsson, Birger. “Bibelns ethos.” In Etik och kristen tro, edited by Gustaf Wingren. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1971, 15–92. Grant, Robert M. The Letter and the Spirit. London: SPCK, 1957. Holmberg, Bengt. Paul and Power: The Structure of Authority in the Primitive Church as Reflected in the Pauline Epistles. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1978. Hübner, Hans. Das Gesetz bei Paulus: Ein Beitrag zum Werden der paulinischen Theologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978. Kamlah, Ehrhard. “Buchstabe und Geist: Die Bedeutung dieser Antithese für die alttestamentliche Exegese des Apostels Paulus.” Evangelische Theologie 14 (1954): 276–282. Käsemann, Ernst. An die Römer. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1974. – “The Spirit and the Letter.” In Käsemann, Perspectives on Paul. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971, 138–166. Kümmel, W. G. Römer 7 und die Bekehrung des Paulus. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1929. – Römer 7 und das Bild des Menschen im Neuen Testament: Zwei Studien. Munich: C. Kaiser, 1974. Linton, Olof. “Paulus och juridiken.” Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift 21 (1945): 173–192. Longenecker, Richard N. Paul, Apostle of Liberty. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976. Michel, Otto. Der Brief an die Römer. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978. Moule, C. F. D. “Obligation in the Ethic of Paul.” In Christian History and Interpretation: Studies Presented to John Knox, edited by William R. Farmer, C. F. D. Moule, and Richard R. Niebuhr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967, 389–406. Plummer, Alfred. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1915. Prat, Ferdinand. The Theology of Saint Paul, Vols. 1–2. London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1926–1927. Schneider, Bernardin. “The Meaning of St. Paul’s Antithesis ‘The Letter and the Spirit.’” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 15 (1953): 163–207. Schrage, Wolfgang. Die konkrete Einzelgebote in der paulinischen Paränese: Ein Beitrag zur neutestamentlichen Ethik. Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1961. Weiss, Johannes. The History of Primitive Christianity. Vols. 1–2. New York: Wilson-Erickson, 1937. Wendland, Heinz-Dietrich. Ethik des Neuen Testament. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978. Westerholm, Stephen. Jesus and Scribal Authority. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1978. Wilckens, Ulrich. “Was heisst bei Paulus: ‘Aus Werken des Gesetzes wird kein Mensch gerecht’?” In Wilckens, Rechtfertigung als Freiheit: Paulusstudien. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1974, 77–109.

Chapter 18

Righteousness, Cosmic and Microcosmic1 According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus began his public activities by proclaiming a pending cosmic transformation: “The time has come. The kingdom of God has drawn near.” The announcement of God’s cosmic plan did not, as one might imagine, render the response of individual human beings vain or irrelevant. Rather, it lent that response urgency: “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:14–15). And the first thing Jesus did, with the dawn of God’s kingdom on the horizon, was to summon local fishermen to help get the word out quickly and sign up subjects for the kingdom (Mark 1:16–20). In a variety of forms, from direct pronouncements to parables and everything in between; and with a variety of pictures, from wedding banquets to harvests to the growth of a mustard seed, the indicative element in Jesus’ message throughout the Synoptic Gospels amounts to the announcement of the dawning rule of God and the simultaneous overthrow of the powers of evil. To illustrate the point, Jesus drove out demons, healed the sick, fed the hungry, raised the dead (Matt 11:2–6; 12:28). But with the proclamation of the inaugurated cosmic transformation, brought about – be it noted – entirely by divine initiative, came the summons to human beings to get on board with what God was doing. In the Synoptic Gospels, equal billing with the indicative announcement of God’s rule was given to imperatives outlining what it would take to “enter the kingdom” and to warnings of exclusion.2 Response of one kind or another was not only essential but inevitable – those not with Christ were in fact against him (Matt 12:30). And response was called for from everyone. As individuals responded, one way or the other, sons were divided against fathers, daughters against mothers, daughters-in-law against mothers-in law (Matt 10:34–35). The individual who would find life – and everything Jesus said indicated that this should be a pressing concern – was told of sacrifices that must be made, loy-

1  This chapter was originally published as “Righteousness, Cosmic and Microcosmic,” in Apocalyptic Paul: Cosmos and Anthropos in Romans 5–8, edited by Beverly Roberts Gaventa, 21–38 (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2013), and is included in this volume with the permission of Baylor University Press. 2  E. g., Mark 9:43–48; 10:15, 23–27; Matt 5:20; 7:13–14, 21.

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alties that must be paramount, temptations that must be avoided (e. g., Matt 10:37–39; 16:24–25; 19:16–26). The required faith, the necessary sacrifices, the inevitable temptations to be overcome may be viewed globally as the lot of all who would enter the kingdom; but they could only be experienced individually. The road to destruction is broad; the narrow gate that leads to life admits one person at a time (Matt 7:13–14; Luke 13:23–24). If we wanted to combine in a single sentence language in vogue in different generations of New Testament scholarship, we could say that, in the message and activity of Jesus, apocalyptic pronouncements and developments were inseparably combined with summons to existential decisions. The focus here is on Paul, but it is important to remember the rootedness of his mission and message in the mission and message of the Lord whose apostle, slave, and ambassador he was. In Paul, as in Jesus, we find the same combination of cosmic events announced and individual responses demanded: here, too, the marriage of the apocalyptic and the existential permits no divorce. In the face of the imminent cosmic outpouring of God’s wrath, the Thessalonian believers distinguished themselves from their compatriots by believing in the apostolic message, receiving it as the very word of God (1 Thess 2:13), thus proving to be among those destined, not for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ (5:9). The announcement to the Corinthians that God was at work in Christ reconciling the world to himself is followed immediately by the appeal, “We beg you, for Christ’s sake, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:19–20). Examples from throughout Paul’s letters could easily be multiplied; but here I want to focus on two verses from Romans 5, both involving the language of righteousness, one making claims of cosmic divine activity, the other implying the requisite individual response. Romans 5:1 reminds us of the latter: “Therefore, having been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:19 proclaims the former: “As by the disobedience of one man the many were rendered sinners, so also by the obedience of one the many will be rendered righteous.” The remainder of this paper will be devoted to the interpretation of these two texts and to reflections on the relationship between them.

Justified by Faith First, then, Romans 5:1: “Therefore, having been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The verse may, of course, be said to sum up the argument of the preceding chapters in general; but it follows immediately the closing verses of chapter 4, according to which Genesis 15:6 was written not only on account of believing Abra-



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ham, to whom righteousness was credited, but also on “our” account, we who likewise believe and to whom, likewise, righteousness is to be credited (Rom 4:23–24). Paul then goes on: “Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God.” Recalling the progression of thought in these verses is useful because it means that doubts raised in recent literature whether Paul’s πίστις Χριστοῦ formulas speak of the faith of the believer in Christ or of Christ’s faithfulness are not an issue here. Here the faith spoken of, as in the immediately preceding verses, and as throughout Romans 4, is determined by the controlling example of Abraham: it is that of the one to whom righteousness is credited. So Romans 4:3: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness.” In 4:5, it is explicitly “their faith” (i. e., the faith of everyone who does not work but believes) that is credited to them as righteousness. Paul can thus speak of “the righteousness of faith” (4:11; the phrase is repeated in 4:13) and of Abraham as the father of all who believe, to whom righteousness is therefore credited (4:11–12). Righteousness language will occupy us shortly, but I want to pause first over the existential reality of faith as Paul portrays it in this context. The analogy between Abraham’s faith and that of the Christian believer goes beyond the mere fact that both involve a trust in God. In Galatians, Paul is content to use Abraham’s faith and Genesis 15:6 to establish the principle that righteousness is by faith (Gal 3:6–7). In Romans 4, by way of contrast, the whole story of Abraham engages him. As a prelude to his references in chapter 5 to the character-building, hope-creating sufferings that necessarily attend Christian faith, Paul develops at some length the trials that beset believing Abraham: his was a faith rooted in hope – in a situation that was beyond all hope (Rom 4:18). The century-old patriarch was to be a father of many nations at a time when his body was as good as dead, and when the womb of his wife, the designated mother-to-be, was itself dead. The textual tradition at this point (4:19) leaves us uncertain whether Paul wants to say that Abraham considered all this but nonetheless did not waver in his confidence in God’s promise, or whether his point is that Abraham blithely disregarded – he did not even consider – all that made fulfillment of God’s promise impossible from a human perspective. Curiously, in this case the presence or absence of a negative makes no difference to the thrust of Paul’s argument; despite all appearances that would throw the object of his faith into question, Abraham persevered, believing that what God had promised, he was able to do. His faith was credited to him as righteousness. And he is the father of all who believe. Two aspects of the analogy Paul draws merit mention here. First, faith is the common factor that unites Abraham with the believers of Paul’s day. Second, the faith shared by all is necessarily the existential experience of

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individuals, demanding sacrifices, beset by temptations, accompanied by sufferings that are unique to each believer. First, the commonality. If Jesus came to bring not peace but a sword, dividing all who encountered him into those for and those against him, the same can be said of Paul. His was a scented message, an odor of life for some, of death for others (2 Cor 2:15–16); what determined the outcome was the submissive, obedient response of faith, on the one hand (cf. Rom 1:5), or the “disobedient,” unsubmissive response of unbelief, on the other (cf. 2 Thess 1:8). Paul’s communities were made up, both exhaustively and exclusively, of οἱ πιστεύοντες, “those who believe,” a term that required no further definition (1 Cor 14:22; 1 Thess 1:7; 2:10, 13). Theirs is the “righteousness of faith” (Rom 10:6), inasmuch as they believe with their heart and are justified (Rom 10:10). Outsiders are οἱ ἄπιστοι, “the unbelievers” (1 Cor 6:6; 10:27; 14:22–24). Since it belonged to the essence of Paul’s message to call for faith, and since that message then became the object of faith, Paul can sum up what he proclaimed simply as “the faith,” again without further definition (Gal 1:23). And faith, as we have seen, is the common and necessary possession of all those whom God finds righteous, before as well as after Christ, Gentile as well as Jew – beginning with Abraham (Rom 3:29; 4:9–12). If all this seems too anthropological in its focus, the reminder is very much in order that the human faith credited as righteousness is not a virtue inherent in the individual who believes, nor even a self-generated response to the proclamation of the gospel, and certainly not the calculated decision of rational human beings. Faith, in Abraham’s case as in that of the Christian believer, is a response called into being by the word of God. The faith of which Paul speaks comes by hearing the word of Christ (Rom 10:17). Believers have faith because the word of God proclaimed to them is effective within them (1 Thess 2:13). The word of God “bears fruit” in those who believe (Col 1:5–6; cf. 2 Thess 3:1). If Paul’s communities are made up of οἱ πιστεύοντες, those who believe, they can also be said to be made up of οἱ κλητοί, the called ones; and the designations are not unrelated.3 Believers are those who hear the effective call of God in the gospel and respond with faith (2 Thess 2:14). Their faith is thus itself a gift of God (Phil 1:29). But the call of God, though resulting in a collective – the community of believers – must be heard as individually addressed if it is to result in a faith like Abraham’s. Though Christ died “for all” (2 Cor 5:14–15), his selfsacrificing love must be experienced, as Paul put it and Luther was wont to repeat,4 as a love “for me,” a giving of himself “for me” (Gal 2:20), if it is 3  Note, e. g., how those who are being saved through the kerygma in 1 Cor 1:21 are “those who believe”; the same people are referred to three verses later as “those who are called.” 4  Note, e. g., his comments on Gal 2:20 in the 1535 Lectures on Galatians, 26.179:



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to evoke in “me” the trust that does not waver in the face of suffering and temptations. Faith, in this sense, is an existential reality for the individual – or it is no reality at all. The call of Christ divided son from father, daughter from mother. Paul’s communities, too, included husbands whose wives were ἄπιστοι, wives whose husbands were ἄπιστοι (1 Cor 7:12–13), servants whose masters (1 Cor 7:21), and masters whose servants were unbelievers (Phlm 10–11). A believer could well be opposed by those of his or her own household (cf. Matt 10:36). And the division was brought about, as we have seen, by the proclamation of the gospel. That all who heard God’s call and believed were then exposed to temptation, liable to suffering, summoned to a life of love, joy, thanksgiving, and patience meant that all could be the object of common exhortations. It remains true that the temptations, the suffering, and the disciplines of faith were necessarily peculiar to each individual.

Justified by Faith Abraham heard the word of God, believed, and was credited with righteousness. Paul writes to those who likewise had heard the word of God in the gospel message, believed, and were declared righteous. As everyone notes who writes on the subject, the language of justification is only one of a number of ways in which Paul can speak of the salvation offered in Christ. It becomes significant first in Galatians, where Paul finds in Genesis 15:6 a godsend for refuting opponents who invoked the story of Abraham for a different purpose: in their view, messianic redemption functions within the framework of a covenant that includes circumcision and the laws of Moses; that Abraham and all who belonged to his household were circumcised proved their point. In Paul’s terms, such people seek righteousness on the basis of the law, where it cannot be found (Gal 2:21; 5:4); Abraham, who was declared righteous on the basis of his faith in the word of God, shows the path that God has ordained (Gal 3:6–9). This usage of righteousness language, developed as Paul dealt with the Galatian controversy, had become “Read these words ‘me’ and ‘ for me’ with great emphasis, and accustom yourself to accepting this ‘me’ with a sure faith and applying it to yourself. Do not doubt that you belong to the number of those who speak this ‘me.’ Christ did not love only Peter and Paul and give Himself for them, but the same grace belongs and comes to us as to them; therefore we are included in this ‘me.’” Also Luther’s Treatise on Good Works, 38: “Faith must spring up and flow from the blood and wounds and death of Christ. If you see in these that God is so kindly disposed toward you that he even gives his own Son for you, then your heart in turn must grow sweet and disposed toward God. And in this way your confidence must grow out of pure good will and love – God’s toward you, and yours toward God.”

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part of his repertoire when he wrote Romans and Philippians, though the contrast remained with a righteousness purportedly based on law (3:11–12; Rom 10:5–10; Phil 3:9). Nearly a century has passed since Albert Schweitzer famously labeled justification by faith a “subsidiary crater” in Paul’s thought;5 curiously, among those inclined to dispute traditional understandings of the doctrine, the temptation remains strong to exaggerate its significance by including as part of its meaning all manner of other convictions important to Paul.6 One should not, perhaps, be too upset when attention is drawn to crucial Pauline themes like the uniting of Jew and Gentile in one family of faith, the gift of the Spirit to the believer, or the deliverance Christ brings about from captivity to sin and death; but to stretch Paul’s language of justification to make it include these latter themes has the inevitable result of distracting from or distorting the more limited but still essential truth of justification itself.7 As background to Paul’s claims about righteousness in both Romans 5:1 and 5:19, let me begin with a few observations about the terminology. I speak in the first place of the Hebrew terms tzaddiq, “righteous,” tzedeqah, “righteousness,” and the verb in the hiphil stem, hitzdiq, which I will render “find” or “declare righteous” rather than “justify” in order to underline its relation with the cognate adjective and noun. The first thing to be said about these words is that they are perhaps the most basic terms in the ethical vocabulary of the Hebrew language. The tzaddiq is the person who does what they are morally bound to do, and what they do is tzedeqah. Parallel to the tzaddiq are the “blameless” (Gen 6:9; Job 12:4), the “innocent” (Job 22:19; Ps 94:21), the “upright in heart” (Ps 32:11; 64:11 [Eng. trans., 64:10]; 97:11). Opposite are the “wicked” (Gen 18:25; Ps 1:6). It is, of course, important to add that Hebrew understandings of what things are the right things to do, and even more basically, of what makes them the right things to do, differ in varying degrees from the moral convictions of most if not all moderns. When Ezekiel describes the tzaddiq, the righteous person, as one who “does not eat upon the mountains or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s 5 Schweitzer,

Mysticism, 225. The argument that follows presents, in summary form, the main points made in my Perspectives, 261–296, with bibliographical references. See now also Southall, Righteousness, 9–20. 7  Wright (Justification, 31–32) has recently lamented the plethora of articles on justification in theological and biblical dictionaries that make no mention of “Abraham and the promises God made to him, incorporation into Christ, resurrection and new creation, the coming together of Jews and Gentiles, eschatology in the sense of God’s purpose-driven plan through history, and, not least, the Holy Spirit and the formation of Christian character.” For my part, I lament that, in such esteemed company, what Paul, more specifically, means by justification is liable to go unnoticed. 6 



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wife or approach a woman in her time of impurity, does not oppress any one, but restores to the debtor his pledge, commits no robbery, gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with a garment, does not lend at interest,” and so on (Ezek 18:5–9 [RSV]), it is clear both that Ezekiel means by the tzaddiq the person who does what one ought to do, and that Ezekiel’s notion of what one ought to do overlaps but does not completely coincide with the notions of people today. When Proverbs tells us that the righteous person has regard for the well-being of animals (12:10), hates lying (13:5), is generous (21:26), and shows concern for the poor (29:7), we could well imagine its world to be our own. But we are drawn up short when it becomes clear that Proverbs sees no difference between the righteous person and the one who is wise, or between the wicked and the fool; and we are left dumbfounded by the apparently facile expectation of Proverbs that the righteous will get on well in this world – have full stomachs, full barns, good health, and long life – whereas the wicked are doomed to terrestrial trouble (e. g., 10:3, 24, 27; 11:8, 31; 12:21; 13:25). For Proverbs, as for all the writers of Hebrew scripture and for Paul as well, we live in a world ordered by the wisdom of God. In such a world, the right thing to do is also the wise thing to do: that is, to refrain from doing what is wise or right in one’s own eyes (Prov 3:7; 12:15; 16:2; 21:2; 30:12), and to seek out the course of action that is in keeping with the wisdom that formed the world in the beginning and that makes it go round to this day (3:19; 8:12–36). It is only natural, then, to expect that those who live in harmony with the order of the cosmos will get on well within it. To be sure, even Proverbs is aware that that does not always happen; it is still better, it is more in keeping with the way things ought to be, to be poor and maintain one’s integrity than rich and crooked in one’s dealings (28:6; cf. 19:22). To do so, to do what is right, is to be righteous and wise. And it all begins with the fear of the Lord (1:7). As the divine order pervades the whole universe, so expectations of right behavior are universal. The language of righteousness is by no means confined to the covenant people of God, nor does it denote belonging to their number. It pervades the book of Proverbs, where there is no talk of ethnicity or covenant. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures, nothing prevents a non-Israelite (i. e., one outside God’s covenant with Israel) from being found “righteous.”8 “Noah was a righteous man” (Gen 6:9), and the announcement that he should enter the ark because God found him righteous in his generation (Gen 7:1) implies that he, not others, is being 8  Conversely, the people of Israel were rebellious, not righteous, before and after they entered the covenant at Sinai (Deut 9:4–7). Clearly, they were expected to be righteous before they entered the covenant, and did not become righteous by doing so.

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delivered from divine judgment because he, not they, is righteous – though they should have been no less than he. There was, moreover, nothing in principle unreasonable in the minimal expectation that there would be fifty tzaddiqim, fifty righteous people, in a Canaanite city like Sodom (Gen 18:24), though the city was later destroyed for lack of ten. Human beings are by nature moral beings; inside or outside God’s covenant people, they are expected to do what is right; and they are righteous only if they do so. And implicitly from the beginning, though first explicitly later, the laws given to Israel were understood, at least in part, as the articulation of what is in keeping with the divine order of the world in which we live, and thus right for all human beings to do: even the nations, Deuteronomy observes, must acknowledge the righteousness of the statutes and ordinances in Moses’ law (Deut 4:6–8).9 Three other observations should be made before we turn to Paul. First, as human righteousness amounts to living in conformity with the order imposed by divine wisdom on the cosmos, so God’s righteousness consists in his readiness to uphold or restore that order when it is violated: by vindicating those who are innocent though wronged, delivering the oppressed, or keeping faith with his people.10 Second, on the human level, perfection was neither expected nor a prerequisite for being righteous. Among the marks of those who live as they ought in Proverbs is their willingness to listen to rebuke (12:1; 13:18; 15:5). Their righteousness thus consists in their basic orientation toward what is right, not in their success in never doing otherwise. Admittedly, a few texts in Hebrew scripture use the terminology in a stricter sense: the point then is that no human being, rigorously appraised, can be righteous before God. One such text, the prayer of Psalm 143:2, was a favorite of Paul’s: “Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is found righteous before you” (cf. also Job 4:17–19; 15:14–16; 25:4–6; Ps 130:3–4). That is a point worth making, but the texts that make it are few. Most are content to ascribe righteousness to imperfect human beings whose basic mindset is right. My third observation expands on the fundamental point that the language of “right” and “righteousness” is simple moral vocabulary; namely, it need not imply or presuppose a legal setting. To be sure, the verb, by which pronouncements are made about whether or not, in a particular and contested situation, one is in the right, is largely confined to legal or quasi-legal contexts. Two crucial remarks need to be made about this usage. First, the 9  That a commandment can be “righteous” is itself evidence that the term does not refer to covenant membership; note also “paths of righteousness” in Ps 23:3, and the “righteous” weights and measures of Lev 19:35–36! Things as well as people can be “righteous” if in harmony with a rightly ordered universe. 10  Cf. Seifrid, “Language,” 415–442.



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connection of righteousness language with doing what one ought to do is not lost when the cognate verb is employed in a legal or quasi-legal setting. It is true that such judgments pertain, not to one’s overall ethical character as righteous or sinner, but only to the specific issue or action under review. Still, the pronouncement pertains precisely to whether or not one is in the right, whether or not one has acted as one ought, in that particular instance. Ethical behavior, as the Israelites understood ethical behavior, is still at stake. Second, it is emphatically not the case that the verdict of the judge is what makes a person righteous or wicked. Righteousness is not a status conveyed by a judge’s decision.11 The righteous person is the person who has done what is right, whether or not the judge acknowledges their righteousness. The sinner, the guilty party, is the person who actually did what is wrong, whether or not a judge pronounces them guilty. Human courts get it right sometimes, but they can also get it wrong. Sometimes innocent blood is shed. Naboth does not become unrighteous when he is falsely accused and condemned at the instigation of Jezebel (1 Kgs 21:1–19). Conversely, murderers do not become righteous if a corrupt judge acquits them. Warnings against declaring righteous the guilty, or declaring guilty the righteous (cf. Exod 23:7; Deut 25:1; Prov 15:17; Isa 5:23), make clear that whether one is righteous or guilty depends on what one has or has not done, regardless of any judicial decision in the matter. To quote the wellknown pragmatic philosopher Bill Belichick, the defendant’s integrity or guilt “is what it is.” Neither righteousness nor its opposite, wickedness or guilt, is a status conveyed by a judge’s decision. The language of righteousness as basic ethical vocabulary is abundantly attested in Paul, now of course in the form of the Greek adjective δίκαιος, “righteous,” the noun δικαιοσύνη, “righteousness,” and the verb δικαιόω, “declare innocent or righteous.” Righteousness, in Paul, too, is what one ought to do, the equivalent of the good, the opposite of sin. To say that no one is righteous, Romans 3:10, is to say that no one does what is good, Romans 3:12. One must choose between serving righteousness or serving sin (Rom 6:18, 19). There is no fellowship between righteousness and wickedness, any more than there is between light and darkness (2 Cor 6:14). And for the apostle, too, the obligation to do what is right is universal; it is, indeed, the implicit basis for the universal outpouring of God’s wrath on all ungodliness and “unrighteousness” (Rom 1:18; cf. 1 Thess 1:10; 5:3). For the benefit of Jews, God has spelled out in the law the moral obligations of all human beings; as a result, the Jew who is instructed in the law is in a position to be a guide to the blind, a light to those in darkness, an educator 11  For the opposing view, see Wright, Justification, 68–69, 90, 92, etc.; but already Bultmann, Theology, 1.272.

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of the foolish – in each case by instructing Gentiles in the moral obligations incumbent upon all: you shall not steal, you shall not commit adultery, and so on (Rom 2:17–22). And God will judge Jew and Gentile alike as to whether they have actually fulfilled these demands: whether they have done what is good (Rom 2:7–10), or – in an equivalent expression – whether they are doers of the law (Rom 2:13). God’s judgment is impartial, and makes no mistakes: it is the doers of the laws who are righteous, and God will declare them so (Rom 2:11, 13). So understood, the “righteousness of the law” is neither arbitrary nor negotiable; it belongs to the moral fabric of the universe. To transgress it is to alienate oneself not only from God, but also from God’s good creation and one’s intended place within it. Paul thus shared with his fellow Jews the conviction, first, that the cosmos is ordered by God; second, that the righteous live in conformity with the wisdom of the created order; and third, that God has given Jews a law spelling out the righteousness he requires, so that the doers of the law will be found righteous. Where he differs dramatically from his fellow Jews12 is in his belief that the circle of those who will be found righteous in the ordinary sense of the word – because they have done what they ought – is a circle devoid of occupants. There is none righteous (Rom 3:10). No flesh will be found righteous by doing what the law requires (Rom 3:20). Two standard objections to this claim will serve to clarify its essence. First, does Paul think there is none righteous because he has set the standard impossibly high, so that anything short of perfection fails the test? After all, as noted above, perfection was not expected in most Hebrew Bible and later Jewish texts that speak of righteous individuals.13 The question misses Paul’s point. Within the apostle’s horizons, there is no one who is 99 % righteous – or 90 %, or 75 %, or 50 %. All humanity, he believes, is at heart hostile to God (Rom 5:10), unsubmissive to God’s laws, and incapable of being otherwise (Rom 8:7–8). Paul does not deny that people, even Gentiles, may do things that are right. But there is in human beings no good that is not tainted by the flesh (Rom 7:18). People sin because they are sinners, under the power of sin, enslaved by sin – though one must add that it is a slavery that they themselves embrace each time they commit concrete wrongful acts; the desires of the flesh evidently correspond all too well with 12 See my article “Pessimism,” 71–98. Also Winninge, Sinners and the Righteous, who argues that Paul introduces something “entirely new” to Judaism in speaking of “all Jews and Gentiles” as “sinners from the outset” (264). Of Rom 5:6–10, Winninge writes: “Whereas Paul’s Jewish contemporaries could admit that all human beings occasionally committed sins, they would never have thought of classifying the basically faithful as sinners (status). In fact, Rom 5:6–10 revolve around this central point” (306–307). 13  Cf. Montefiore, Judaism and St. Paul, 40–42, 70, 78; Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles, 80–81; Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 137–138, 175–176, 203.



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the desires of their flesh (cf. Gal 6:8; Rom 7:18). Thus, when God gives his righteous law to rebellious human beings, its practical effect, through no fault of the law, is to exacerbate their rebelliousness, to show the exceeding sinfulness of their sin (Rom 7:7–13). As a result, though the law was given with a display of God’s glory, its administration, among sinners, is reduced to one of condemnation and death (2 Cor 3:7, 9). Second objection: Has Paul forgotten the rites of atonement that are also provided for in the law?14 That seems unlikely; he may well have believed – what other early Christian writers explicitly say – that the old covenant’s rites of atonement were ineffective in themselves, serving only to foreshadow the once-for-all, effective self-sacrifice of Christ (cf. Rom 3:25; Col 2:17; Heb 10:1, 4). But we should also remember that, even among nonChrist-believing Jews, the rites of atonement were thought to apply, not to high-handed sinners, but only to those living basically within the terms of the covenant (cf. Num 15:30–31). For Paul, however, the sinfulness of all humankind is radical. His anthropology, we may say, when compared to that of most Second Temple Jews, is more pessimistic; the universal human condition is, in his understanding, more dire. And, of course, it had to be. Paul was no pessimist by nature. But he had come to see that the divine remedy for human sinfulness was the crucifixion of the Messiah. So catastrophic a remedy demands a catastrophic predicament. After all, if people were righteous in the ordinary sense of the word, because they did what they ought, then there was no reason for Christ to die (Gal 2:21). But Christ had died. So righteousness is not possible in the ordinary way. In short, the radical nature of human unrighteousness and ungodliness becomes apparent only in the light of the cross. And at the same time as the cross of Christ reveals the depths of human sinfulness, it serves as the divine answer to the dilemma. Logically, plight precedes solution; but this perception of the plight emerged clearly only in the light of the solution.15 So in the end, Paul’s dire depiction of the human dilemma is only the backdrop for his proclamation of the divine solution. If human beings prove, individually and en masse, to be unrighteous, God remains righteous, committed to upholding – or, in this case, restoring – the goodness of his creation. The restorative act of God’s righteousness is the atoning death of 14 

Cf. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 157. From Plight to Solution, is right to remind us that the movement from plight to solution is repeatedly traced in both biblical and postbiblical Jewish tradition. And Paul certainly drew on biblical texts in depicting humanity’s plight apart from Christ (esp. Rom 1–3). But his reading of these texts, and his reconfiguration of standard views of humanity’s plight, are doubtless the product of his post-conversion thinking. See my Perspectives, 359. 15 Thielman,

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his Son. As a result, those who are not righteous in the ordinary sense of the word (i. e., by doing what they ought) can nonetheless be declared righteous by God – extraordinarily but nonetheless rightly, because the wrongs they have done and the bane that followed those wrongs were borne by, and exhausted on, the dying Redeemer (Rom 3:24–26). “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”: so Paul writes in Romans 5:8, and he goes on immediately to say, in effect, “We are declared righteous at Christ’s expense, at the cost of his blood” (Rom 5:9). In 1 Corintians 1, Paul delights in the paradox of a gospel by which God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, what is weak to confound the strong (1 Cor 1:27). Similarly, in Romans 3 to 5, Paul relishes the paradox of a gospel by which, for Christ’s sake, God rightly declares righteous the unrighteous. The startling claim that God justifies the ungodly (Rom 4:5) must be given its full force, not allowed to be blunted either by familiarity or by a failure to distinguish between the essence of the claim and one of its implications, the inclusion of sinful Gentiles with sinful Jews in the people of God. A crucial Pauline paradox is lost when the moral dimension of his language of justification is downplayed or transformed into a message of liberation, family membership, or the breaking down of barriers between Jews and Gentiles. To repeat, justification is only one way in which Paul depicts salvation in Christ; but it is an essential way, highlighting as it does the moral nature of human beings, the awful reality and consequences of their sin, and that God, even in redeeming sinful human beings, underscores rather than overlooks the difference between good and evil. And, again to repeat, justification is by faith. Christ invited all, even tax-collectors and prostitutes, to the kingdom of God; but – by definition, we may say – those who will have nothing to do with God’s rule exclude themselves from his kingdom. For Paul, too, those who remain unsubmissive to God’s righteousness in the rebelliousness of their flesh remain – by definition, we may say – at enmity with God;16 hence, the urgent appeal, “Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20). Those, on the other hand, who have 16  Cf. Williams, “Righteousness of God,” 256: “If God is revealing his righteousness [Rom 1:17], how can Paul say that the revelation is ‘on the basis of faith’? He does not mean that man’s faith is the necessary precondition for the revealing of God’s righteousness. … On the other hand, the apostle cannot conceive of the fulfilling of that purpose apart from the human reception and appropriation of the revelation. Indeed, one can ask whether in Paul’s letters or elsewhere in the biblical tradition there can be any ‘revelation’ without the human act of receiving what God initiates. Does not the very notion of revelation imply two parties, revealer and recipient …? In spite of God’s initiative, man does not ‘see’ his righteousness, does not experience it as such, except on the basis of faith. Thus faith, which is both fruit of and response to the gospel, actually contributes to the carrying through of God’s eschatological plan, even as faith – the sign and seal of the new humanity God is creating – is also the goal.”



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been declared righteous on the basis of faith enjoy peace with God, stand in the sphere of his grace, and rejoice in the hope of sharing God’s glory (Rom 5:1–2). So far, then, the righteousness of Romans 5:1: righteousness, we may say, on the microcosmic level.

Cosmic Righteousness Paul can at times write as though, given that this present evil age is beyond redemption, God in Christ is salvaging what can be salvaged before its warranted destruction, just as a remnant in Isaiah’s day was all that kept Israel from becoming like Sodom and Gomorrah (cf. Rom 9:27–29). First Thessalonians in its entirety reads that way. So does the stated goal of all Paul’s mission, in 1 Corinthians 9:19–22 and again in Romans 11:14: all he does is done with the hope that “some” will be saved. Without pausing here to note other texts to this effect, we turn now to the rather different emphasis of Romans 5:12–19. Here the story is not that of rescuing a few from the massa perditionis, but of the reversal of Adam’s sin and its consequences for humankind as a whole. The story of humankind as here related begins with Adam, the one man by whose sin, sin entered the world, the representative man by whose sin all human beings became sinners. The instinct that prompted Paul to add the last words of Romans 5:12, “inasmuch as all sinned,” may well have arisen out of an anxiety to guard against the misunderstanding that Adam’s fall removed culpability for sin from later generations. No, says Paul – without retreating from his claim that Adam’s sin had universal consequences; all human beings descended from Adam re-enact his disobedience and make his sin their own. Some sin, as he did, by transgressing God’s commands; others (those between Adam and Moses) sinned without transgression of an explicit law (5:13–14). But sin, having penetrated the race in its forebear, now rules all its members. To speak of humankind as humankind was created is no longer an adequate account of its condition. Humankind-in-Adam has both embraced sin and become sin’s slaves. Humankind-in-Adam is a ruined creation, a condemned race. But Adam is the type of Jesus Christ, whose righteousness proves as determinative of the character of the new humanity as Adam’s disobedience was of the old. Elsewhere, Paul will speak of Christ as God’s Son, sent in the form of sinful flesh (8:3; cf. Gal 4:4). Here, where the reversal of (the one man) Adam’s misdeed is in view, he speaks of the other man Jesus Christ, and of the humanity patterned after each. Our focus here is on the language of righteousness. Christ’s righteous act, his δικαίωμα, verse 18, is paralleled with his obedience, verse 19, and contrasted with Adam’s offense and dis-

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obedience. If one specific act is in view, it is presumably the climax of a lifetime’s obedience in Christ’s death on the cross, as in Philippians 2:8. That act of righteousness and obedience leads to righteousness for others, specifically, as a sentence of acquittal, declaring them righteous (so vv. 16 and 18); they receive the gift of righteousness (v. 17); the many are constituted as righteous (v. 19). The three expressions represent different ways of saying the same thing, which itself does not differ from what in verse 1 is referred to as being declared righteous. The forensic connotations usually found with the verb δικαιόω seem present throughout vv. 15–19, as indicated by the noun δικαίωμα, contrasted as it is with the κατάκριμα, the condemnation that followed Adam’s sin. Paul cannot say everything every time he opens his mouth, and much left unstated in these verses can be filled in by what we have seen of Paul’s righteousness language earlier in Romans. Nothing is said of how Christ’s righteous act led to a gift of righteousness to sinners. But we have no reason not to supplement the cryptic reference here with the explicit language of 3:24–26: God put forward Christ Jesus to atone for sins, so that he might declare righteous the one who has faith in Jesus. Nothing is said directly in 5:15–19 of the reception of the gift of righteousness by faith, though it should be noted that the beneficiaries of the gift in verse 17 are identified as “those who receive the overflow of grace and the gift of righteousness.” Recall that a positive response to the gospel proclaimed by Paul is often summed up as faith, but at other times as “receiving” (δέχομαι, λαμβάνω; the verbs are synonyms in 2 Cor 11:4) the message (1 Thess 1:6; 2:13) or the gospel (2 Cor 11:4); and with the reception of the message comes the reception of its benefits: grace (2 Cor 6:1), reconciliation (Rom 5:11), the spirit of adoption (Rom 8:15; cf. 1 Cor 2:12; Gal 3:2, 14), and so on. Presumably, the same steps are presupposed in Romans 5:15–19 as well: the reception of God’s overflowing grace and gift of righteousness (5:17) follows from the reception of the gospel in faith. But if Romans 5:15–19 does not repeat all that Paul had said about righteousness earlier in the letter, it is in order to emphasize an aspect of God’s gift of righteousness to this point left unstated. More than a salvage operation is at work. In Galatians and 2 Corinthians, Paul had spoken of a “new creation,” which is a reality for “anyone who is in Christ” (2 Cor 5:17; cf. Gal 6:15). Here we may say that Adam and Christ are prototypes of the old and the new in humanity. If Adam’s sin and disobedience brought the rule of sin and death upon “the many” who constituted the old humanity, Christ’s righteousness and obedience bring righteousness and life to “the many” who constitute the new. To read the passage in this way implies that not all who belong to the old humanity necessarily belong to the new; the obvious advantage of such



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a reading is that it allows consistency to Paul, who, as we have seen, elsewhere and repeatedly distinguishes between those who are being saved, on the one hand, and those who are perishing, on the other (1 Cor 1:18); who, in 2 Corinthians 5:17, explicitly limits the new creation to those who are “in Christ”; and who, immediately after Romans 5, will imply in Romans 6 that those not baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, and who have thus not “died to sin,” continue to live in sin, a slavery that ends in death (6:16, 23). The alternative is to read Romans 5 (and 1 Cor 15:22: “In Adam all die; in Christ all will be made alive”) as saying that the “all” who are made righteous by Christ’s obedience are the same “all” who were made sinners by Adam’s offense. Righteousness and salvation thus become truly universal. One could then cite in support Romans 11:32: “God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.” If Colossians and Ephesians are allowed to be part of the picture, we could then add that Colossians speaks of God as reconciling to himself “all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (1:20); and that Ephesians sees the fulfillment of God’s purposes in the uniting of “all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth” (1:10). It is a vexed issue. As an interpreter of Paul, I think the former interpretation the more likely. Consistency is not to be bought at any price,17 and perhaps we may say, as one recent commentator has said, that Romans 5 represents a “charismatic breakthrough”18 not possessed by Paul when he wrote elsewhere of those destined for wrath. The problem with the charismatic-breakthrough proposal is that the same insight seems to have been reached already in 1 Corinthians 15:22, but then forgotten in 2 Corinthians when Paul speaks of his mission as bringing the aroma of Christ alike to those who are being saved and to those who are perishing (2:15), of his gospel as hid from those who are perishing (4:3), and of the importance, in this day of salvation, of not receiving the grace of God in vain (6:1–2). Again, if Romans 5 does indeed represent a charismatic breakthrough, it seems to have been forgotten in chapter 6 and chapter 8, where Paul warns that those who live according to the flesh will die (8:13). Ephesians and Colossians, too, are certain that wrath, rather than a place in God’s kingdom, awaits the “children of disobedience” (Eph 5:5–6; Col 3:6). The conversation on these issues continues,19 but this paper must not. I conclude by listing five points that seem accurately to reflect Paul’s thinking on our topic, whatever uncertainties remain: 17  As elsewhere, so on this issue Heikki Räisänen is content to see Paul simply as inconsistent; see “Controversial Jew,” 325–326. 18  Cf. Hultgren, Romans, 234. 19  E. g., Boring, “Language,” 269–292; Hillert, Salvation.

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1. The old age marred by sin is destined to give way to God’s new creation, a new age that has already dawned with the resurrection of Christ. 2.  The new age can have no place for the sin that marred the old. 3. Hence, the sinful inhabitants of the old age can participate in the new only if they are somehow made righteous. 4.  The death of Christ is God’s appointed means for that to happen. 5. It is incumbent on human beings who hear the call of God in the gospel to receive the righteousness of God freely, as a gift of God’s grace, with an existential faith, like Abraham’s. Bibliography Boring, M. Eugene. “The Language of Universal Salvation in Paul.” Journal of Biblical Literature 105 (1986): 269–292. Bultmann, Rudolf. Theology of the New Testament, Vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951. Hillert, Sven. Limited and Universal Salvation: A Text-Oriented and Hermeneutical Study of Two Perspectives in Paul. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1999. Hultgren, Arland J. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. Luther, Martin. Lectures on Galatians 1535. In Luther’s Works, vols. 26–27, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan. Saint Louis: Concordia, 1963–1964. – Treatise on Good Works. In Luther’s Works, vol. 44, edited by James Atkinson. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966, 15–114. Montefiore, Claude G. Judaism and St. Paul. London: Max Goschen, 1914. Räisänen, Heikki. “A Controversial Jew and His Conflicting Convictions: Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People Twenty Years After.” In Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of Ed Parish Sanders, edited by Fabian E. Udoh, with Susannah Heschel, Mark Chancey, and Gregory Tatum. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008, 319–335. Sanders, E. P. Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977. Schweitzer, Albert. The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. New York: Seabury, 1931. Seifrid, Mark A. “Righteousness Language in the Hebrew Scriptures and Early Judaism.” In Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1, edited by D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001, 415–442. Southall, David J. Rediscovering Righteousness in Romans. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Stendahl, Krister. Paul among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983. Thielman, Frank. From Plight to Solution: A Jewish Framework for Understanding Paul’s View of the Law in Galatians and Romans. Leiden: Brill, 1989. Westerholm, Stephen. “Paul’s Anthropological ‘Pessimism’ in its Jewish Context.” In Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, edited by John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole. London: T. & T. Clark, 2006, 71–98. – Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.



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Williams, Sam K. “The ‘Righteousness of God’ in Romans.” Journal of Biblical Literature 99 (1980): 241–290. Winninge, Mikael. Sinners and the Righteous: A Comparative Study of the Psalms of Solomon and Paul’s Letters. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1995. Wright, N. T. Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009.

Chapter 19

St. Paul and Knowledge of the Natural Law In the midst of Britain’s darkest and finest hour, James Welch of the BBC wrote on February 7, 1941 to an author he had never met, but whose popular theodicy The Problem of Pain he had found helpful: would C. S. Lewis be willing to help in the work of religious broadcasting, perhaps with a series of talks on “the Christian, or lack of Christian, assumptions underlying modern literature”? Three days later Lewis responded. He would like to do a series, but “modern literature would not suit [him].” Lewis continued: “I think what I mainly want to talk about is the Law of Nature, or objective right and wrong. It seems to me that the N. T., by preaching repentance and forgiveness, always assumes an audience who already believe in the Law of Nature and know they have disobeyed it. In modern England we cannot at present assume this, and therefore most apologetic begins a stage too far on. The first step is to create, or recover, the sense of guilt.” The upshot of Lewis’s efforts at recovery was perhaps the most widely read defense of natural law in the twentieth century, the series of broadcast talks that came to be entitled “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe” and was included as the opening section in Lewis’s Mere Christianity.1 In his letter, Lewis contrasted the situation in “modern England” with that presupposed by New Testament “preaching.” Of necessity (as well as by commission), my focus here is confined to the New Testament, and – more specifically – to the letters of Paul. The question I will attempt to address is whether Paul’s letters2 in fact reflect a belief that untransformed humanity is equipped to discern the difference between moral right and wrong without the benefit of “special revelation” (i. e., apart from any encounter with the Mosaic law code or the Christian gospel). Lewis claimed that New Testament “preaching” as a whole presupposes such an awareness; 1  The story of Lewis’s work with the BBC is told in Justin Phillips, C. S. Lewis in a Time of War. For the correspondence here cited, see also Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis 2.469–470. 2  For purposes of this paper, the study of Paul includes all the letters attributed to the apostle within the New Testament canon; primary focus, however, will be on the letters acknowledged by all to be authentic. The “natural theology” that a number of interpreters have found in Pauline speeches in Acts (note Acts 14:15–17; 17:22–31) lies outside the scope of this paper; it does not, in any case, include reference to natural law.

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I follow his lead by asking whether this is true of Paul’s understanding of the gospel – an aspect of our topic that has generally been neglected in the past. The argumentation of the opening chapters in Romans, which contain the foundational texts for Christian reflection on natural law, will provide the subject matter for much of my paper. I conclude my survey with a brief look at other passages in Paul’s letters where a conviction that all human beings possess moral sensibilities seems apparent.

Paul’s Predecessors Before we look at Paul, however, I want at least to mention some of the precedents on which Paul could draw in expressing notions of natural law. I do so with some hesitation, partly because I cannot pause here to trace evidence of their actual influence on Paul, and partly because I do not wish to give the impression (conveyed by a good deal of literature in my discipline) that once one has suggested where the ideas of a text “come from,” one has said all that needs to be said about that text. On the other hand, to speak as though Paul created notions of natural law out of nothing would be at least equally misleading – and would in effect discredit, in a backhanded sort of way, the very claims that Paul is credited with originating: after all, a sensibility purportedly common to all human beings ought to have attracted the attention of some human beings long before Paul! Mention of a few of Paul’s predecessors is thus very much in order; I will list six. 1. In the story of the Old Testament, the law of God is not given until Exodus 20. Still, those living before the revelation of Mount Sinai are consistently depicted as possessing moral sensibilities and bearing moral responsibility. Without hearing any prohibition of murder, Cain knew that he would sin if he killed his brother, and that he ought to resist the temptation (Gen 4:7). The corruption of the world in Noah’s day brought on the judgment of the flood (Genesis 6–8); that of Sodom and Gomorrah, the “raining” of brimstone and fire (Genesis 18–19). Most tellingly, when Abraham’s deception concerning his wife is uncovered, he is rebuked by Abimelech, king of Gerar, for doing things “that ought not to be done” (Gen 20:9).3 Abraham (whose own grip on natural law appears to be deficient!) lamely replies that he thought there was “no fear of God at all in this place” (20:11). 2. The opening chapters of Amos (1:3–2:3) are perhaps the best known of many prophetic texts where non-Israelite people are deemed responsible 3 

Biblical quotations in this paper are taken from the New Revised Standard Version.



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and liable to judgment for various acts of inhumanity.4 By implication, they knew better. 3. The “wisdom literature” of the Old Testament is universal in its perspective; references to God’s dealings with his covenant people or to the law revealed at Mount Sinai are conspicuous in their absence. Yet these books are replete with observations about the conduct of the “righteous” and the “wicked.” In Proverbs, such observations are accompanied by the expectation that, in a world that exists and is steered by the wisdom of God, the righteous are bound to flourish, the wicked to flounder. Job (we may say) problematizes the latter assumption without in the least undermining the notion that human beings as human beings are bound to respect standards of right behavior that seem clear enough though never codified.5 4. Such codification is, of course, to be found in the Mosaic law as recorded in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. That the Mosaic code is the product of divine revelation is emphasized throughout; any suggestion that we are dealing with the moral intuitions of a Moses, or of any other human being, is counter to the whole ethos of Israelite law. Equally clear is the conviction that, for the Israelite people to whom it is given, the revealed Torah defines what is right behavior (Deut 6:25). Of interest for our purposes is nonetheless the ascription, in Deuteronomy 4:6, of sufficient moral insight to non-Israelite nations to recognize the wisdom of Torah’s decrees: Israelites are to “observe” the commandments “diligently, for this will show [their] wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’” 5. Leaving the Old Testament, we may note that when Paul, in Romans 1, speaks of behavior that is “unnatural” (1:26) and of people doing “things that should not be done” (1:28), he uses terminology rooted in Stoic thought.6 It need not follow that he had studied “Philosophers of the Ancient World” at the University of Tarsus; the terminology was doubtless “in the air” in Paul’s day. What is both clear and important for our purposes is that such language, derived ultimately from Greco-Roman moral philosophy, resonated with convictions fostered by Paul’s own upbringing in the religious traditions of Israel. The order of the cosmos is, for a Jew like Paul, given by divine wisdom, and to that wisdom one ought to conform one’s conduct:

4  Several prophetic books contain clearly marked sections devoted to “judgment of the nations” (e. g., Isa 13–23; Jer 46–51; Ezek 25–32). 5  Note especially the substance of Job’s moving protest in 31:1–40. 6  See Fitzmyer, Romans, 286–289.

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in that sense,7 even a Jew could say that one ought to live “according to nature.” Indeed, given that both nature’s order and Israel’s law are the gifts of the same benevolent deity, it might well seem to follow that, in giving his law to Israel, God was merely spelling out, for the benefit of his covenant people, what behavior is in tune with the order of the universe. 6. In fact, a number of Jews before Paul had connected these lines of thought.8 The wisdom literature of the Second Temple period (515 BCE – 70 CE) had come to identify the laws of Torah with divine wisdom;9 as a result, a life lived in submission to God’s law was seen as conforming to the wise order that pervades all creation. The apologetic literature of Hellenistic Judaism went further, identifying Torah with the “law of nature” of Stoic philosophy. Philo of Alexandria provides the best, though not the only, evidence of this development.10 Understanding the Pentateuch as the law code of Israel, he finds it significant that the code begins with an account of creation; the implication, he reasons, is “that the world is in harmony with the [Mosaic] Law, and the [Mosaic] Law with the world.” Hence, anyone who observes this law becomes thereby “a loyal citizen of the world, regulating his doings by the purpose and will of Nature, in accordance with which the entire world itself also is administered.”11 Such citizens can hardly be limited to any one nation;12 after all, the patriarchs, living long before the Mosaic law was given to Israel, demonstrated that those who do not have access to that law can nonetheless observe its precepts. Like the putative “Wise Men” of the Stoics, they were, for Philo, “living laws” themselves, the “originals” of which the later written laws were copies.13

Natural Law Presupposed by Paul’s Gospel? We turn now to Paul, beginning with Lewis’s claim that natural law is presupposed in the very proclamation of the gospel. Lewis’s claim becomes our question for investigation: what measure of moral discernment among

7 

One must, of course, stress that, for a Jew, the “law of nature” cannot be envisaged “in either impersonal or Deistic fashion as in Stoicism,” but as “the dependent and personal word of the Creator, indeed specifically of the God of Israel” (Bockmuehl, “Natural Law,” 20). 8  See, e. g., 4 Macc 5:25. 9  See, e. g., Sir 24:23–27; Bar 4:1. 10  See Horsley, “Law of Nature,” 35–59. 11 Philo, Creation 3, Loeb translation. 12  See Philo, Abraham 60–61; Moses 2.36. 13  See Philo, Abraham 3–6, 16, 275–276; Moses 1.162.



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human beings in general is presupposed by Paul when he talks about the Christian gospel? Paul claims to live in the service of the gospel (Rom 1:9), a gospel with which he has been “entrusted” by God (1 Thess 2:4). Indeed, God himself (Paul claims) invites people, through the work of Paul and other “ambassadors for Christ,” to “be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20). The word of the gospel that Paul proclaims is thus rightly received, not as the word of human beings, but as the word of God (1 Thess 2:13); and those who respond to the gospel are responding to the “call” of God heard when the gospel is proclaimed (2 Thess 2:14). And God not only proclaims the gospel through his messengers, but simultaneously works in the hearts of those who receive it, prompting their response of faith (1 Thess 2:13). Such faith is thus itself a gift of God’s grace (Phil 1:29), a “good work” begun by God in the lives of believers (Phil 1:6; cf. 1 Cor 3:5–9). In short, “the gospel of God” is not, for Paul, simply information about what God has done, not even if we allow God himself, through the apostles, to be the informer. Rather, it is the locus and instrument of divine power in transforming humankind and, ultimately, all creation (cf. Rom 1:16; 8:19–23). In what terms did God, through Paul, proclaim the gospel? We have, of course, no direct access to the content of Paul’s missionary preaching. The sermons placed in Paul’s mouth in the Acts of the Apostles are the immediate products of Luke’s pen, and Paul’s own writings to Christian communities refer only in passing to his initial evangelistic appeal. The latter references nonetheless make clear that Paul presented the gospel as a message of “salvation”: indeed, he directed all his efforts, and became “all things to all people,” in order that he might “save” those whom he encountered (1 Cor 9:22; cf. 1:21; 10:33). A message of salvation is undoubtedly good news, but it presupposes a dilemma from which salvation is needed. Paul speaks of deliverance from divine judgment, from “the wrath that is coming” (1 Thess 1:10; cf. 5:2–10). People who receive the gospel are designated those who are “being saved” in contrast with the “perishing” (1 Cor 1:18; 2 Cor 2:15: 4:3), or with “the world” that is to be “condemned” (1 Cor 11:32). Condemned for what? Paul has lists ready to hand of the kinds of misdeeds that bring exclusion from God’s kingdom and provoke divine judgment (e. g., Gal 5:19–21; 1 Cor 6:9–10). Sins of sexual immorality figure largely in such lists, but jealousy, anger, selfishness, theft, and (notably) idolatry make an appearance as well. In short, we may say that Paul presupposes an expectation on God’s part that people will duly acknowledge God and behave rightly toward their fellow human beings; that Paul has very specific things in mind when he speaks of those expectations; and that he affirms the culpability before God of those who fail to meet them.

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Outside of Romans, however, Paul does not address in any direct way the degree to which people are aware of these expectations. Though regrettable from the perspective of this paper, the omission is in itself hardly significant: given the occasional, unsystematic character of Paul’s references to judgment in these epistles, one should not expect treatment of every pertinent issue. Moreover, since Pauline scholarship has never sensed a need to curb discussion where the apostle is silent, perhaps we may allow ourselves to wonder whether, what Paul neglected to discuss, he regarded as too selfevident to require discussion. May we not assume that Paul thought people possess some awareness of moral requirements that he believed them responsible to fulfill? As we shall see, such suspicions are both confirmed and problematized by what Paul writes in Romans. For the moment, we may say only that outside Romans, we have nothing in Paul’s letters to indicate the degree of consciousness of sin that he encountered in, or attributed to, his hearers prior to their exposure to the gospel.

Natural Law in Romans 1 and 2? To Romans, then, where matters become more systematic, more explicit, but not as unambiguous as we would have liked. Writing to a Christian community Paul had never met, he found it important to set forth his understanding of the gospel in some detail, and it is even possible that aspects of what he writes in the opening chapters resemble the message he would have proclaimed on arrival in a city where Christ had hitherto not been preached.14 After speaking of the gospel as “the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith,” and as effectively revealing the “righteousness of God” (Rom 1:16–17), Paul proceeds in Romans 1:18–3:20 to show that all human beings, Gentiles and Jews alike, have a need for what the gospel offers. The argument, in brief, is that no human being, Gentile or Jew, is righteous in the ordinary sense of the term, that is, by meeting God’s requirement of doing good. Rather, all human beings are subject already now to the wrath of God because of their “ungodliness and wickedness” (1:18), and further judgment awaits them on “the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (2:5). Salvation is only possible through divine intervention. Because the sacrificial death of God’s Son has atoned for human wrongdoing, God is prepared to declare erstwhile sinners to be righteous if they respond with faith to the gospel message (3:21–26). Paul then proceeds to illustrate the notion of “righteousness through faith” with the story of 14 

It was his goal to confine his missionary activities to such areas. See Rom 15:20–21.



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Abraham in Romans 4 and to describe various aspects of the life of faith in subsequent chapters. We cannot here trace in detail Paul’s argument in showing universal sinfulness, but a series of brief observations is in order. 1. Broadly speaking, we may say that the argument highlights Gentile sin in chapter 1, Jewish responsibility in chapter 2. To be sure, chapter 1 speaks in general terms of the “ungodliness and wickedness” of human beings (1:18). But inasmuch as Paul establishes such wrongs without reference to the divine law given to Israel, inasmuch as he highlights wrongs that figured largely in Jewish depictions of Gentile sin, and since he explicitly turns in chapter 2 to address a hypothetical Jewish interlocutor (see 2:17), we may safely conclude that Gentile sin is uppermost in his mind in chapter 1. 2. That being the case, the argument of chapter 1 assumes great importance for our purposes, for here Paul argues for the reality and inexcusability of human sinfulness even apart from (what would later be called) “special” revelation. No matter, he claims. What is knowable about God is accessible to human beings. God’s power and deity, themselves invisible, are attested by the visible creation and thus perceptible to the human mind (1:19–20). The appropriate human response (to judge by what Paul says did not happen) would have been to acknowledge, honor, and thank God and to live in ways that reflect our grateful indebtedness to God (cf. 1:21). But humans, Paul asserts, have chosen otherwise: suppressing the truth, they opted to worship created beings (1:18, 21–23). From this (capital “S”) Sin of “ungodliness” flowed particular (small “s”) sins of “unrighteousness,” as described in verses 24–32: the latter, as violations of the moral order inherent in creation, are concrete expressions of the more fundamental refusal to acknowledge the Creator. At the same time, inasmuch as creation takes its own revenge on those who violate its order, Paul can see divine wrath at work even now as God gives up to the consequences of their misdeeds those who do not “see fit to acknowledge [him]” (1:28). 3. Paul exemplifies the violation of the natural order by speaking of the homosexual activities of women and men: relations that are “natural” are exchanged for those that are “unnatural” (1:26–27). Such activities are, to be sure, forbidden in the Mosaic law code (Lev 18:22; 20:13), but (as noted above) Paul chooses to draw instead upon the language of the moral philosophers of his day.15 15  The designation of homosexual activities as “contrary to nature” goes back at least to Plato; see his Laws 1.636C. It was adopted by Hellenistic Jewish authors (e. g., Josephus, Against Apion 2.199, 273–275; Philo, Special Laws 3.39, etc.).

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4. Paul concludes this section of his argument by claiming that human beings not only do what they ought not to do, but that they are aware of the divine “decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die” (1:32). “Such things” include murder (1:29), but other items on the list are scarcely the subject matter of statutory law: “They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (1:29–31). Again, it is apparent that Paul has clear ideas of the sorts of things that all human beings are bound to do and not to do, however difficult the task may be of converting those notions into positive law. 5. In Romans 1, then, Paul ascribes a significant measure of moral discernment to human beings in general. Still, the following qualifications must at least be kept in mind.16 i. To this point in the argument, Paul speaks of human knowledge of moral laws only to render human disobedience inexcusable. Romans 1 contains nary a suggestion that humans respect such laws. ii. Paul sees the closest possible link between knowledge of moral laws and knowledge of God; or, to put the matter more negatively, between violation of the moral laws of the created order and the refusal to acknowledge the Creator.17 On the basis of what he writes here, we might well wonder whether Paul would have deemed in any way desirable, or even possible, an open recognition of moral norms apart from an acknowledgement of the God who sanctions them. iii. The whole discussion of Romans 1 is, for lack of a better word, ahistorical; that is, though the progression of the argument and the tenses Paul uses might suggest that at a particular moment in time human beings chose not to acknowledge God, and that God subsequently abandoned them to the consequences of their sins, it would be foolish to try to assign a date or location to these “events.” What we have is a narratival depiction of what human beings in general are like rather than an account of particular events in the history of the race or even of a necessary sequence in the lives of individuals. That being the case, the question may at least be asked whether Paul would have attributed to each individual the awareness of God and of moral norms that he attributes to humankind as a whole. iv. Paul indicates that when humans exchanged “the glory of the immortal God” for images of what God created, they “became fools,” their thinking 16 

See also Dodd, “Natural Law,” 140–141. noted above, Paul includes idolatry in his lists of vices; see 1 Corinthians 6:9; Galatians 5:20. 17  As



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became “futile,” and “their senseless minds were darkened” (1:21, 23; cf. Eph 4:17–19). Though at some level Paul still believes that people carry an awareness of moral norms they are violating, mention of “suppressed” truth and “darkened” minds suggests that that awareness has been banished from their active thinking,18 and that attempts to raise it to consciousness will meet with resistance. 6. Bearing those qualifications in mind, we may return to Paul’s main argument. The primary thrust of the argument in Romans 2 is that, when Jews transgress the Mosaic law code, they show themselves to be sinners no less than Gentiles. Such a claim is of less immediate interest since our concern is not with human responses to “special” revelation. What is significant is that, in the simple language of “good” and “evil,” Paul finds terminology for God’s moral requirements that is equally applicable to Jews (who have been given the Mosaic law) and to Gentiles (who have not): “There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality” (2:9–11). 7. Paul then indicates that what the gift of the law does for the Jew is to spell out the “good” that God requires of all human beings. Informed by the law, the Jew is in a position to be “a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, … a teacher of children” (2:18–20). Paul refers to the prohibitions of stealing, adultery, and idolatry as examples of norms that are articulated in Torah but binding on all human beings (2:21–22). At the same time, Paul evidently thinks enough darkening of the human mind has taken place to make it worth God’s while to spell out his moral expectations in the Mosaic law code for the benefit of his covenant people and their (nonJewish) pupils.19 18 Note, too, that Paul here speaks of people in general as knowing God (1:21), though he elsewhere declares, “Some people have no knowledge of God” (1 Cor 15:34; cf. 8:7; 1 Thess 4:5). Presumably, he has in mind a suppressed knowledge that plays no role in people’s active thinking. Cf. Whiteley, Theology, 56: “We might argue that mankind ‘had all the evidence available’ but ‘refused to draw the conclusion’. When we say that a man ‘refuses’ to draw a conclusion, we normally mean that he has drawn it, dislikes it, and smothers it at once.” 19 Cf. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.8.1, where Calvin, after noting that the “inward law … in a sense asserts the very same things that are to be learned from the two Tables,” goes on to insist that “man is so shrouded in the darkness of errors that he hardly begins to grasp through this natural law what worship is acceptable to God”; moreover, man is “puffed up with haughtiness and ambition” and “blinded by self-love. … Accordingly (because it is necessary both for our dullness and for our arrogance), the Lord has provided us with a written law to give us a clearer witness of what was too obscure in the natural law, shake off our listlessness, and strike more vigorously our mind and memory.”

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8. Nonetheless, however helpful the Mosaic law code may be, its presence is not deemed essential, for even apart from Jewish instruction, Gentiles are said to have some awareness of the good they are to do: when, by nature, 20 they do what the law demands, they demonstrate their awareness of what it requires; the latter is said to be “written [i. e., by God] on their hearts” (2:14–15). Paul clearly thinks of such good deeds as occasional rather than habitual, for he goes on to suggest that the conscience of those who do them more typically “accuse[s]” than “excuse[s]” them; and the conclusion of the whole argument is the universal sinfulness of humankind (3:9–20, 23). But however occasional Gentile good deeds may be, and however little they offset the overriding conclusion that no one is righteous (3:10), their very presence is sufficient to indicate that Gentiles, even apart from the “special revelation” of God’s law, have an awareness of the good they are required to do. And – it is important to add – Paul here indicates that, at least at times, the awareness leads to appropriate behavior. 9. Not only is “what the law requires” said to be divinely implanted in (“written on”) people’s hearts; “their own conscience also bears witness” in that their thoughts “accuse or perhaps excuse” what they have done (2:15). Presumably, the witness of conscience, like the truth of 1:18, can be suppressed. It remains a reality, however, that Paul indicates21 will highlight human responsibility “on the day when … God … will judge the secret thoughts of all” (2:16). 10. To repeat a point made above after my summary of the argument of Romans 1: Paul speaks in Romans 2 of human awareness of moral norms only to make inexcusable what he sees as universal human sinfulness: his argument ends with the statement “that every mouth” is to be “silenced, and the whole world … held accountable to God” (3:19). Let me return to my starting point. C. S. Lewis thought that Christians in New Testament times could assume some awareness of the natural law in their preaching of repentance and forgiveness. Testing Paul on this claim, 20  Some interpreters suggest that Paul speaks in 2:14 of Gentiles who do not by nature possess the law rather than of Gentiles who by nature do what the law requires; but the latter interpretation is (I believe, rightly) preferred by most; cf. Fitzmyer, Romans, 310. Since at least Augustine (The Spirit and the Letter 26.44–27.47; see Gathercole, “Conversion,” 147–172), interpreters have wondered whether the Gentiles who, according to Rom 2:14, do by nature what the law requires are not Gentile Christians; given what Paul says elsewhere about human rebellion against God’s law (cf. Rom 8:7–8), this seems a natural – for many, a necessary – conclusion. But Christian behavior does not become a topic in Romans until later chapters; here Paul is specifically addressing the moral responsibility of unredeemed humanity, Gentile and Jew alike. See Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 104–105. 21  So at least if v. 16 is linked closely with the preceding verse. The alternative is to link v. 16 with v. 13, and to treat the intervening verses as a parenthesis.



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we have found that, as he presents the gospel, he does indeed presuppose that human beings have violated moral norms that bind them; moreover, he attributes to them some awareness of their obligations. The message of the gospel resonates with that awareness, and God uses the proclamation of the gospel to produce conviction and faith in the hearts of those who believe. Even apart from the proclamation of the gospel, Paul finds in the good deeds that Gentiles do evidence of an awareness of moral norms. At the same time, he can also speak of a suppressed truth and of darkened minds; and he clearly thinks the “special revelation” of the Mosaic law code serves a purpose in spelling out what God requires of his (willfully forgetful) human creatures.

The Moral Sensibilities of Gentiles Elsewhere in Paul Despite serving as the foundation for Christian thinking about natural law, then, Romans 1 and 2 provide little basis for optimism about human willingness to acknowledge, let alone consistently submit to, its testimony. Before we conclude our survey, however, it is worth noting other evidence in Paul’s letters of his conviction that people exposed neither to the Mosaic law nor to the preaching of the gospel nonetheless possess moral sensibilities. 1. Like Genesis, Paul believes that even before the law was given, there was sin – and thus moral responsibility – in the world (Rom 5:13). It was not the prohibitions of murder, adultery, or theft (Exod 20:13–15) that made these activities wrong, though the explicit prohibitions did serve to turn what was already sin into the more flagrant wrong of “transgression” (cf. Rom 4:15). 2. In describing the kind of conduct his converts ought to display, Paul can use terminology that suggests the attractiveness of good behavior and thus implies the openness of outsiders to being attracted by it. If the Thessalonians live as they should, they will “behave in a becoming manner (NRSV: “properly”) toward outsiders” (1 Thess 4:12). The Romans for their part are to “take thought for what is noble in the sight of all” (Rom 12:17).22 3. In Philippians 4:8, Paul urges the believers to focus their thoughts on “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable,” anything excellent or “worthy of praise.” Birger Gerhardsson sums up my point: “The reasoning is based on the assumption that in God’s world there are still among human beings values which are rightly held in honor, such things as nobility of 22 

Cf. Rom 14:18; 2 Cor 8:21; 1 Tim 3:7; also 1 Pet 2:12; 3:16.

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spirit, generosity, purity, reliability … and that Christians are to cultivate and promote things of this kind. This line of thought, and the many terms for moral values here taken from the Hellenistic world, show that there is a fundamental accord between the ethical ideals of Christians and those of their environment.”23 4. Conversely, in 1 Corinthians 5:1, Paul speaks of a kind of immorality not even found among Gentiles. Even Gentiles, Paul implies, have their limits. 5. In charging the Roman believers to “live peaceably with all,” to the extent that it depends on them (Rom 12:18), Paul implies that human sinfulness is not such as would render it impossible for believers to live harmoniously with many people much of the time. 6. It was already noted that Paul, in Romans 2, uses the language of “good” and “evil” for what is morally right and morally wrong for Jews and Gentiles alike. In Romans 13, he asserts that the governing authorities have a divine mandate to promote the good and restrain evil, and speaks without qualification as though they carry out that commission: “For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom 13:3–4). Though effectively functioning as servants of God, the “governing authorities” are not said to acknowledge the deity whose will they promote.24 The passage is important both for evidencing a Pauline concern for the promotion of what is good in society even apart from the progress of the gospel, and for the implication that the human beings who govern society are capable of recognizing, and inclined to promote, what is good. 7. With this passage we may compare 1 Timothy 2:1–4: it is “right” and “acceptable in the sight of God our Savior” that believers should “lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity”; but their freedom to do so is said to be dependent on “all who are in high positions,” for whom prayers are therefore to be offered. Here there may be some doubt about the will or ability of those in government to protect the good in society; but that it is their task to do so is presupposed. Perhaps even more than the classic “natural law” texts of Romans 1 and 2, these latter passages in the Pauline corpus offer a basis for ascribing to 23 Gerhardsson,

Ethos, 83. this respect they are like Cyrus, who is said by the prophet to fulfill a divine mandate even “though [he does] not know [God]” (Isa 45:4, 5). 24  In



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human beings outside the community of the redeemed the discernment to acknowledge, and the will to promote, what is good. We ought not, I would suggest, see Paul contradicting in Romans 13 his argument for universal human sinfulness in Romans 1–3:25 the “good” acknowledged and promoted in Romans 13 falls far short of the due acknowledgement of God and the rightful behavior toward other human beings that God, according to the opening chapters of the epistle, requires but does not find. We may well wonder whether, for Paul any more than for Augustine, good that is done apart from the “obedience of faith” (Rom1:5) amounts to anything other than “splendid vices”26 whose benefit for life in this present age is neither to be dismissed nor disdained, but which differ in their very essence from new creation righteousness. Certainly, Paul himself cannot be satisfied, nor will creation cease its groaning, until the whole cosmos is redeemed from its bondage to sin and corruption (Rom 8:18–23) and the lordship of Christ is universally acknowledged, “to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:9–11). Still, Paul does recognize societal goods that are worth realizing within life in this age, and the promotion of moral good and the restraint of moral evil are among them. Paul’s own commission, he believed, called on him to prepare a people for the transformed life of the age to come. But they fulfill God’s will, too, who labor to establish and promote what is good in “the present evil age” (Gal 1:4). Bibliography Bockmuehl, Marcus. “Natural Law in Second Temple Judaism.” Vetus Testamentum 45 (1995): 17–44. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vols. 1–2, edited by John T. McNeil; translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960. Dodd, C. H. “Natural Law in the New Testament.” In Dodd, New Testament Studies. Manchester: University Press, 1953, 129–142. Fitzmyer, Joseph A. Romans. New York: Doubleday, 1993. Gathercole, Simon J. “A Conversion of Augustine: From Natural Law to Restored Nature in Romans 2:13–16.” In Engaging Augustine on Romans, edited by Daniel Patte and Eugene TeSelle. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2002, 147–172. Gerhardsson, Birger. The Ethos of the Bible. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981. Horsley, Richard A. “The Law of Nature in Philo and Cicero.” Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 35–59.

25  Recall that Paul could allow, even in Romans 1–3, that Gentiles do some good (2:14–15). 26 See Augustine, City of God, 19.25 for the idea, though the expression itself, commonly attributed to Augustine, is not found in his writings. See Wetzel, “Splendid Vices,” 271–272.

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Lewis, C. S. The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. 2, edited by Walter Hooper. London: HarperCollins, 2004. Phillips, Justin. C. S. Lewis in a Time of War. London: HarperCollins, 2002. Räisänen, Heikki. Paul and the Law. Second edition. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1987. Wetzel, James. “Splendid Vices and Secular Virtues: Variations on Milbank’s Augustine.” Journal of Religious Ethics 32 (2004): 271–300. Whiteley, D. E. H. The Theology of St. Paul. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1964.

Chapter 20

The Judaism Paul Left Behind Him1 Little can be said about my topic that will not, by some, be deemed controversial, but my title at least is not meant to be so. Whether we think that Paul, in turning his back on what he once considered “gains” so that he might “gain Christ,”2 was abandoning Judaism tout court or merely exchanging one form of Judaism for another, it is clear that he abandoned something. That something – or, more precisely, what Paul as an apostle writes about that something3 – is the topic of this paper. That something which he himself once practiced but later abandoned was also something that he believed non-Christian4 Jews continued to practice. 1  This article is dedicated, with my admiration and best wishes, to Bengt Holmberg, a friend and former fellow-student in the seminars of Birger Gerhardsson. 2  The language is that of Phil 3:7–8. 3  Paul calls it “Judaism” (Gal 1:13–14), providing the warrant for the usage of the term in this paper. Cf. Barclay, “Paul Among Diaspora Jews,” 113, especially n. 43. Life in “Judaism” presumably means “living as a Jew”; for Paul, this meant living under the Sinaitic covenant and its laws, a “slavery” from which he claims believers have been delivered (4:21–5:1; see the discussion below). But what nomenclature best designates the way of life Paul abandoned will not be debated here. 4  Though, to repeat, nomenclature is not the focus of this paper, some justification for using the terms “non-Christian,” “pre-Christian,” and “Christian” may well be in order, given their conspicuous absence from Paul’s writings, and given that the use of these familiar terms may indeed obscure significant differences between first-century believers in Christ and their twenty-first century counterparts. Pragmatic considerations count for something, and these terms are convenient and simple when compared with the clumsiness of proposed alternatives. They are, moreover, hallowed by long established and popular usage, which, as a general rule, is stubbornly resistant to scholarly attempts at innovation and purification (a general rule for which, as a general rule, we may give much thanks). Beyond pragmatic justifications of this kind, we may note that the term “Christian,” while not used by Paul, does have roots in the first century (see Holmberg, “Evaluation,” 226–228), and serves to identify, and to distinguish from others, a group of people whom Paul himself regarded as readily identifiable and distinguishable from others, though not one for which he had a handy designation (cf. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 175): it overlaps entirely with those he labels “believing ones” (e. g., 1 Cor 1:21; Gal 3:22; 1 Thess 1:7; 2:10); “those who are being saved” (1 Cor 1:18; 2 Cor 2:15); “saints” (1 Cor 1:2; 6:1–2; Phil 4:22); “those who belong to Christ (Jesus)” (1 Cor 15:23; Gal 5:24); “the church” (1 Cor 12:28; Phil 3:6) or “church(es) of God” (1 Cor 10:32; 11:16, 22; 15:9) or “of Christ” (Rom 16:16), etc., all regarded as part of an increasingly worldwide “brotherhood” (“in the Lord” [Phil 1:14; cf. 1 Thess 4:10; 5:25–27]). Furthermore, the term draws attention to the (not insignificant) commonalities between first-

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Note, for example, his claim in Philippians 3 that he himself had quit the pursuit of “a righteousness of [his] own that comes from the law” in order to seek “the righteousness from God” that is “based on faith” (Phil 3:9). The same language recurs in Romans 9:30–10:13, where it is “Israel” that is said to strive for a righteousness based on the law (Rom 9:31; 10:5), in ignorance of “the righteousness that comes from God” (10:3) and is based on faith (10:6). Paul could (as we say) “relate” to zealous non-Christian Jews because he had once been one himself (compare Rom 10:2 with Gal 1:14; Phil 3:6). We may therefore expand the evidential base on which we draw for Paul’s understanding of his former way of life to include passages that describe the way of life of non-Christian Jews in general.5 When Paul speaks of his pre-Christian days in Philippians 3, his point is that believers in Philippi should not heed those who advocate physical circumcision and (presumably) observance of other distinctively Jewish practices (Phil 3:2). To reinforce his point, Paul notes that he himself once journeyed along the path that such people promote, but had left it for the greater good of knowing Christ (3:4–11). By implication, then, it would be foolish for Christians in Philippi to take up a life that Paul had seen fit to reject. It is likely that the same implication lies behind Paul’s talk in Galatians about his “onetime life in Judaism.”6 Teachers who followed Paul into Galatia have told the believers to get circumcised and adopt other practices prescribed by the Mosaic law. In effect, Paul is saying already in chapter 1 that he knew that way of life well and had outstripped others in its practice; but he had abandoned it when God revealed to him his Son (Gal 1:13–16). Why, then, should the Galatians now adopt it? If Paul sees a parallel between his former life in Judaism and the path advocated by his opponents7 in Galatia, then his arguments against them century believers in Christ and those of later centuries, as well as to what distinguished first-century believers in Christ, as it has distinguished later believers, from those outside their communities: baptism as an initiation rite; celebration of “the Lord’s supper” (to use Paul’s terminology [1 Cor 11:20]) as an ongoing observance; faith in Jesus as Messiah, the Son of God, whose death and resurrection are the divinely appointed means of salvation; and a recognition of all who share in these observances and convictions, wherever found and whatever their ethnic background, as one’s “brothers and sisters in Christ.” These common features, fundamental to the self-understanding of first-century believers in Christ no less than to that of Christians in later centuries, are obscured – as the proverbial elephant in the room is somehow lost to view – when the title “Christian” is refused to first-century believers in Christ. Cf. the comments of Bengt Holmberg in “First Hundred Years,” 3–5. For an alternative view, see the article in the same volume by (my McMaster colleague and friend) Anders Runesson (“Christian Identity”). 5  In particular, Romans 2–3, 9–11; 2 Corinthians 3. 6  Cf. Niebuhr, Heidenapostel, 20–21. 7  It is sometimes suggested that the teachers who followed Paul into Galatia may not have thought they were opposing Paul. But to my mind the peculiar emphases of



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in Galatians provide further evidence of his understanding of the Judaism he had left behind him. To be sure, the immediate issue is not what the Galatians are to think about Judaism as such, but whether they, as Gentile believers in Christ, should be circumcised. Yet circumcision could only have been urged upon the Galatians as part of a bigger picture, that is, as a requirement for membership in the people of God – a people marked by their adherence to the Mosaic covenant. It is worth noting, in this context, that Paul’s opponents saw no conflict between the requirement for circumcision and a recognition of Jesus as Messiah.8 Indeed, if the term “Judaism” is used to mean life lived under the Mosaic covenant and its laws, then these teachers came to Galatia to promote a sect that had recently begun to take shape within Judaism, distinguished from other Jews precisely by its faith in Jesus as Messiah. In the view of these teachers, the framework within which all God’s people were to live remained that of the Mosaic law and covenant. That such was his opponents’ line of argument appears clear from Paul’s response to it. The Galatians, as he perceived their situation, were eager to be “under law” (4:21), the very law to which he, as a believer in Christ, had died (2:19) but under which non-Christian Jews continued to live (cf. 1 Cor 9:20). The Galatians were thus on the verge of entering the same covenant (that of Mount Sinai), and thereby experiencing the same “slavery,” as that known by “the present Jerusalem” (4:21–5:1). They, like the pre-Christian Paul of Philippians 3, and like the non-Christian Jews of Romans 9:30–10:13, would be pursuing a righteousness based on the law (Gal 5:4; cf. Rom 9:31; Phil 3:9) – a righteousness that Paul contrasts with that of faith in Galatians (3:11–12; cf. also 2:16) just as he does in Philippians and Romans. Thus, though his opponents thought faith in Christ itself required faithfulness to the laws of God’s covenant with Israel, Paul saw adoption of their position as a complete severing of one’s ties with Christ (5:4) and an entering upon the very way of life that he, in embracing God’s revelation of his Son, had abandoned. The Epistle to the Galatians thus provides us with indispensable evidence for how Paul, as apostle, had come to view the Judaism he left behind him. Such, then, is the evidence on which the following depiction will be based: Paul’s accounts of his own life before his encounter with Christ, his portrayal of the life of non-Christian Jews, and his arguments against those who were advocating what (in his view) amounted to the same way of life as he had once practiced and as was now lived by non-Christian Jews. BeGalatians 1 and 2 are best understood as a response to a deliberate attempt to undermine Paul’s claims to apostolic commissioning and authority. 8  So much is implied by Gal 6:12.

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fore we turn to the depiction, however, three preliminary points should be noted. 1. My focus throughout this paper is on Pauline thought, not on (any form of) first-century Judaism per se. What Paul writes about his “onetime life in Judaism” is the product of Christian theologizing; it represents, at best, indirect evidence of the way he viewed his old way of life while still immersed in it, and of the way non-Christian Jews in the first century perceived their own life and practice. But my concern here is to explore that for which Paul’s writings provide direct evidence: his views as an apostle of Jesus Christ of the Judaism he once practiced but later came to reject – and, given that he came to reject it, the explanations he provides of its inadequacies. Paul’s perspective on his past has its own interest, and it is the purpose of this paper to illuminate it. 2. Part of what distinguishes Paul’s Christian from his pre-Christian view of his old way of life is that he has come to describe the latter in terms designed to highlight a contrast with (how he understands) his present life: he has now, for example, been redeemed from the curse that hangs over all whose claim to righteousness is based on the “works of the law” (Gal 3:10– 13; cf. 4:5).9 Yet while it is true that Paul’s descriptions of his pre-Christian life (and of the life of non-Christian Jews) are shaped by his understanding of what it means to be a believer in Christ, it is also true that they thereby illuminate the self-identity Paul possesses precisely as a believer. In what follows, attention will be paid to this latter aspect of my topic as well. 3. Though any attempt at a composite picture of the Judaism Paul left behind him must collect and weigh the evidence from each of his letters before proceeding with generalizations, limitations of space require that I confine this presentation to the resulting composite picture. I am, of course, aware of the risk involved in a systematic presentation of evidence detached from its original context. Nonetheless, where points are made that seem consistent with Pauline emphases in all his epistles, the evidence will simply be cited without comment. Where points are made that seem dependent on the distinctive argumentation of a particular epistle, that will also be noted. The result, I trust, will be faithful to Paul’s thought while still reflecting the occasional nature of the writings in which we encounter it.

9  It must, however, be conceded that a sharp contrast between Judaism as he knew it and the Christian faith he came to adopt was present in Paul’s mind even before he abandoned the former for the latter: he cites his persecution of the church as a mark of his devotion to Judaism (Gal 1:13; cf. Phil 3:6; and note John 16:2). Cf. Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles, 284–292.



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“Under Law” I begin with the smashingly obvious. Paul sees the piety of the Judaism he left behind him, and of non-Christian Jews in general, as centered on Torah and its observance. In the autobiographical section of Galatians 1, Paul recalls his past in these terms: I progressed in Judaism beyond many of my peers among my people, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my forefathers. (Gal 1:14)

To what “traditions” is he referring? Josephus tells us that the Sadducees recognized as valid only prescriptions written in the law of Moses, whereas the Pharisees “transmitted to the people certain regulations handed down from the fathers” (Ant. 13.297). In Matthew and Mark as well, Pharisees criticize Jesus’ disciples for their failure to observe the (extrabiblical) “tradition of the elders” (Matt 15:2; Mark 7:5). Since Paul himself was a Pharisee (Phil 3:5), it is tempting to see distinctively Pharisaic, extrabiblical traditions behind his claim that, in his “onetime life in Judaism,” he showed great zeal for “the traditions of [his] forefathers.” But such is too narrow a reading of his words. When Josephus speaks of the “ancestral laws” and “customs” of the Jews, he is clearly thinking of the (written) Torah.10 Paul himself may have observed the law in its Pharisaic interpretation and with Pharisaic amplifications. But he was fully aware that the Pharisees were not the only Jews devoted to the Mosaic code.11 And since he speaks of his zeal for the ancestral traditions as the standard for measuring his progress “in Judaism,”12 the traditions in question are presumably such as all religious Jews observed. These, then, are the laws of the Pentateuch, the laws of Moses: to show zeal for God “in Judaism” means to show zeal for God’s laws. Paul claims that in his pre-Christian days, he outshone his compatriots in this regard. Faithfulness to Torah was the measure, not only of one’s progress “in Judaism,” but also of one’s righteousness (i. e., before God). As noted above, 10 

See my Scribal Authority, 15–16. Phil 3:5 implies as much. When Paul writes that “as to the law,” he was “a Pharisee,” he means that, among the various ways of construing and observing the law found among Jews, it was the Pharisaic interpretation that he followed. (The implication appears to be, however, that Pharisees were well known for the strictness of their interpretations and the rigor of their practice. Cf. Baumgarten, “Name,” 411–428; Sanders, Judaism, 420–421.) 12  Pharisees would not have been Pharisees if they had not thought the Pharisaic construal of the law was the best on offer. Nonetheless, they would not have equated the term “Judaism” with a distinctively Pharisaic way of life. Cf. Sanders, Judaism, 448–451. 11 

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Paul characterizes both his own pre-Christian life and the life of non-Christian Jews as a pursuit of a righteousness based on observance of the Mosaic law (Phil 3:9; Rom 9:31).13 That Paul can also speak of such righteousness as his “own” (Phil 3:9), and that of non-Christian Jews as “their own” (Rom 10:3), does not mean that, even as an apostle, he thought of it negatively as (what we call) “self-righteousness.” The point is simply that one’s righteousness depended on one’s (“own”) observance of the law:14 “It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified [= found righteous]” (Rom 2:13).15 This is very much in keeping with the language of Deuteronomy 6:25: “And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us.”16 Observance of the Mosaic laws was, of course, one’s obligation, as a Jew, under the covenant that Israel had entered with God at Mount Sinai (Exod 19:3–8; 24:3–8). Paul makes clear that the obligation was entailed in one’s circumcision, understood as one’s entry-point into that covenant (cf. Gal 5:3). Under the sanctions of that covenant, those who disobeyed its laws were cursed (Gal 3:10), whereas obedience brought “life” in God’s favor. Paul sums up the defining principle of the “righteousness based on law” in the words of Leviticus 18:5: “The one who does these things [i. e., who observes these commandments] will live by them” (so Gal 3:12; Rom 10:5; cf. Deut 30:15–20). 13  Though (as noted above) the focus of this paper is on Paul’s retrospective understanding of the Judaism he left behind him, not on first-century Judaism per se, Paul’s observation that non-Christian Jews pursue a righteousness based on law is not without interest in the context of a current debate about the nature of Second Temple Judaism. Critics of E. P. Sanders are wont to question the universality, among Jews of the period, of the piety he labels “covenantal nomism”; they point out that whole strands of Jewish literature (particularly wisdom and apocalyptic texts) from the period make little or no reference to the covenant or laws of Sinai (see, e. g., the references in my Perspectives, 344 n. 8, and in my “Anthropological ‘Pessimism,’” 87–88 n. 49 [chapter 4 in this volume]). Assuming that what the authors of these texts did not write about did not concern them, Sanders’s critics argue that there were groups of Jews in antiquity for whom Sinai held little significance. Against this, the obvious counterargument is that what got included in such texts was determined rather by their genre than by the limitations of their authors’ interests. Without pursuing that discussion here, we may at least note that Paul shows no awareness of a Judaism that did not center on Sinai. Judaism, as one widely travelled, well informed, intensely religious, first-century Jew knew it, was devoted to the laws of Moses and expressed its devotion to God by obeying them. 14  If one could be “blameless” by the standard of “righteousness under the law” (Phil 3:6), then such “righteousness” was clearly measured by one’s conduct. On the verse, see the discussion in my Perspectives, 272 n. 26, 402–403. 15  Cf. my Perspectives, 262–273. 16  Cf. also Ezek 18:5–9, where individual righteousness, based on one’s own observance of God’s commands, is (programmatically) in view.



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Paul can thus speak of those bound by the Mosaic covenant and its obligations as “under law.” The situation, he came to believe, carried with it negative consequences; but the expression itself can be used without any such connotations simply to distinguish Jews (who are “under law”) from non-Jews (who are not; cf. 1 Cor 9:20–21; and note that Christ himself, as a Jew, was born “under law,” according to Gal 4:4). Negative connotations are present first when those contrasted with Jews (“under law”) are not Gentiles (who are without the law), but Christians, who are “not under law, but under grace” (Rom 6:14–15; cf. Gal 4:4–5; 5:18). There is no reason to think Paul regarded life “under law” negatively while he himself pursued its righteousness. For the Paul of the epistles, however, that life belongs to his past. His erstwhile zeal for the law and for the “gains” that he would secure by its observance has been replaced by (and its “gains” dismissed as mere “garbage” in comparison with) a desire to “gain Christ and be found in him” (Phil 3:4–11). If zeal for the law once found expression in his persecution of the church, he “now proclaimed the faith that he once tried to destroy” (Gal 1:13, 23). Pursuit of his “own” righteousness, based on his observance of the law, has been replaced by a prizing of the righteousness that is his as a gift from God, received by faith (Phil 3:9; cf. Rom 5:17). The operative principle for his new life is not “The one who does these commandments will live by them,” but “The one who is righteous through faith shall live” (and, for its part, “the law is not based on faith” [Gal 3:11–12]).17 The covenant under which Christians live is not that of Mount Sinai – from the “slavery” of which they have been set free (4:24; 5:1) – but that promised to Abraham and to all who, by sharing Abraham’s faith in the gospel message, have become Abraham’s true offspring (3:7–9, 15–18, 29; 4:21–5:1). Freed (“redeemed”) from the “curse” of the law (3:13), they have been “called” into a state of “grace” (1:6; cf. Rom 5:2; Gal 5:4). For them, God’s will is to be discerned, not (as, according to Rom 2:18, it is discerned by Jews) through the prescriptions of Torah, but by the judgment of their renewed minds (Rom 12:2) and the direction of the divine Spirit in which they are to “walk” and whose “fruit” they are to bear (Gal 5:16–25). They are under no obligation to obey the law’s commandments as such: having “died” to the law,18 they are free from its sphere of authority (“not under law”)19 – 17  Note also the pointed assertion that the righteousness of faith is “apart from law” in Rom 3:21–22. 18  Rom 7:6; Gal 2:19. Surely Paul the apostle never wrote anything more contrary to the whole ethos of the Judaism he left behind him than when he claimed that he had to “die to the law” in order to “live to God” (Gal 2:19). 19  Rom 6:14–15; 7:6; 1 Cor 9:20; Gal 4:5; 5:18. Cf. my Perspectives, 431–433. Albert Schweitzer (Mysticism,192–196) argued, on the basis of 1 Cor 7:17, 20, that, for Paul,

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though the good they are to do (as the “fruit of the Spirit”) is such that no law will condemn (Gal 5:22–23).

“In the Flesh” Paul can use the term “flesh” in a neutral way of the embodied existence of human beings, including both his own as an apostle (Gal 2:20) and that of Christ himself (Rom 8:3; 9:5). But his more distinctive usage of the term designates humanity as hostile to God, or even the hostility itself.20 Ever precisely because the law is no longer valid for believers, they must show the utter insignificance of such externalities by maintaining the state they were in (the “status quo”) when they became believers. Hence, Jewish Christians should continue to live by the law, though non-Jews must not submit to its regulations. Cf., however, Horrell, “Corporate Christology,” 337–339. Romans 14 shows clearly that Paul thought it appropriate for believers (whether or not they were Jews is not a factor in the discussion) with a “strong” conscience (like his own) to treat all days the same and to eat any food they liked. (For the latter point, see also 1 Cor 10:23–11:1, where, again, ethnicity plays no part in instructions pertaining to food that are given to a church that included both Jewish and Gentile believers.) Just as clearly, Paul indicates in 1 Cor 9:20–21 that he lived “without the law” when among Gentiles though, for strategic (missionary) purposes, he lived by the law when among Jews. (Of this text, and Paul’s claim that, among Jews, he “became as a Jew,” C. K. Barrett [Epistle, 211] writes pointedly: “But Paul … was a Jew. He could become a Jew only if, having been a Jew, he had ceased to be one and become something else. His Judaism was no longer of his very being, but a guise he could adopt or discard at will.” The perspective of this verse [like that, e. g., of 1 Cor 10:32, where “the church of God” is treated as a separate category from “Jews” and “Greeks”] must be balanced, though not displaced, by texts like Rom 9:3; 11:1, where Paul asserts his kinship [“according to the flesh”] with the Jewish people.) Moreover, much of what he says (in claims that are never qualified by reference to ethnicity, though, if anything, they have particular relevance precisely for Jewish believers) would lose its force if he imagined believers as still bound to observe a law which he claims they are no longer “under,” to which he says they have “died,” and from which they have been “set free.” Nor (contra Tomson, Jewish Law, 67–68) does Gal 5:3 suggest such an obligation. Circumcision marks the entry point into the Sinaitic covenant; should the Galatians become circumcised, they would then (as Paul observes in Gal 5:3) be obligated to obey all the laws of that covenant. But such an obligation no longer applies to Christians who have been “set free” from the “slavery” of that covenant and have “died” to its laws (2:19; 4:21–5:1). That Paul expected Jewish Christians not to observe Jewish dietary laws at the common meals of Christians is noted by Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 177–179; Holmberg, Identity, 397–425. In general, however, and without qualifying his statements of freedom from the law, Paul does think obedience to particular statutes is very much in order if required by the scruples of one’s sensitive (“weak”) conscience (Rom 14:2, 5, 14, 23), or by the need to avoid either offending others (14:13–22; cf. 1 Cor 8:7–13) or undermining one’s attempts to proclaim to them the gospel message (1 Cor 9:20). 20  Cf. Barclay, Obeying the Truth, 194–209; Dunn, Theology, 62–70.



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since Adam’s act of disobedience, human beings have not been born into the innocence of Eden, where perfect communion with their Creator was enjoyed, but into a race estranged from God, entertaining illusions of autonomy, and marked in its behavior by an “ungodliness and unrighteousness” that provoke God’s wrath (Rom 1:18). Its fundamental sin of refusing to give God due acknowledgement and thanks (1:21) finds expression in multifarious derivative sins, to the committing and consequences of which God has “given them up” (1:24, 26, 28). Humanity lives “under [the power of] sin” (3:9), or “in sin” (6:1), or as “slaves of sin” (6:16–23). It does not find it within itself to submit to God’s law (8:7). Such is the state of humanity “in the flesh”; “in the flesh” nothing “good” (i. e., nothing untouched by sin) is to be found (7:18). The point to be made here is that Paul sees the life of Jews “under the law,” in this respect, as no different from that of Gentiles “without the law”: the law was given to, and is lived under by, people who are “in the flesh.”21 Hence, the dilemma of Romans 7:14–25, for what happens when sinful flesh encounters God’s law – however “holy, righteous, and good” the commandments themselves may be22 – is inevitable. The rebelliousness inherent in human beings (i. e., the “sin” of Rom 7:8–11) lies dormant until confronted with a command against which it can rebel; but such a confrontation brings out its true character (sin is shown to be “exceedingly sinful through the commandment” [7:13]). Even where there is an acknowledgement that the law is good (7:16, 22; Paul may well be thinking here of his own erstwhile zeal for the law, and that of other pious Jews), it is evil that continues to be done (7:15–25).23 The sinful bent of the flesh prevents the law from conveying the life it promises (8:3; cf. 7:10). “The mindset of the flesh is one of hostility toward God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (8:7–8). The same conclusion is reached in the discussion of universal sinfulness that opens the letter to the Romans. Jews, informed by the law they have been given, can instruct Gentiles about their mutual obligation to do what 21 Note, e. g., that for Galatian believers to submit to the law was to attempt to complete “with the flesh” what was begun “with the Spirit” (Gal 3:3). To list the ways in which one complied with the law’s requirements is to give expression to one’s “confidence in the flesh” (Phil 3:3–6). 22  Rom 7:12. It appears that Paul’s primary purpose in including what is essentially an extended parenthesis between Rom 7:6 and 8:1 is to show how the law itself can be good, even though its encounter with sinful humanity only serves to exacerbate human sinfulness (5:20) and to highlight “the sinfulness of sin” (7:13). Earlier passing remarks in the letter (3:20; 5:20; 6:14; 7:5) required such an explanation. Cf. Kümmel, Römer 7 (summarized in my Perspectives, 135–146). 23  Paul must have found the supreme example of this phenomenon in the way his very zeal for the law led him to persecute “the church of God” (Gal 1:13–14; Phil 3:6). Cf. Chester, Conversion, 185–186.

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is good (2:17–20). But, essentially, there is no difference between Jew and Gentile either in what God requires of them (2:6–11) or in their response to that requirement. Jews sin under the law, Gentiles sin apart from the law, and both, because of their sin, face condemnation (Rom 2:12; cf. 3:22–23). Jews and Gentiles alike are explicitly said to live “under sin” (Rom 3:9). Hence, Jews (under the Sinaitic covenant) no less than Gentiles (outside it) need to be “saved” (i. e., from the wrath to come; so Rom 10:1; 11:14; 1 Cor 9:20–22; cf. 1:18–25).24 For all the privileges that Israel had been granted, Paul came to believe that Jews (“in the flesh”) share in the dilemma of postAdamic humanity.25 It is a dilemma from which, Paul came to believe, Christ offers deliverance. Believers die with Christ to the old way of life and begin, with Christ, a new (Rom 6:1–11; 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 2:19–20). They are no longer “in the flesh” (in the negative sense of the term; Rom 8:9); indeed, “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh” (Gal 5:24). Similarly, having died, with Christ, to sin, they are no longer under its power: they no longer live – they must not any longer live – “in sin” (Rom 6:1–23). Once alienated from God as God’s “enemies,” they have now been reconciled to God by the death of God’s Son (Rom 5:10). They await the appearance of God’s Son and, with it, deliverance from the wrath to come (1 Thess 1:10; 5:9). The human drama of sin and redemption can, for Paul, be told as a story of two persons, Adam and Christ (Rom 5:12–21; cf. 1 Cor 15:21–22). Adam’s sin made people sinners, and it brought them under the power of sin and death. Christ’s act of righteousness makes people righteous, the recipients of God’s gift of righteousness, and the beneficiaries of overflowing grace. Depicted in these terms, distinctions between Jews and Gentiles vanish; indeed, neither Abraham nor Moses has a determining role to play in the drama. Moses (i. e., the Mosaic law) is allowed only the very secondary role of exacerbating, and thus highlighting the depths of, human sinfulness 24 “The crucial point is that Paul applied the entrance requirement ‘faith in Jesus Christ’ to Jews as well as to Gentiles. Even Peter and Paul, who had lived as righteous Jews, had to do something else in order to be members of the people of God; they had to have faith in Christ (Gal. 2:15 f.)” (Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 172 [see 171–179]; cf. Donaldson, “Sonderweg,” 44–47; Longenecker, “Supersessionism,” 26–35). 25  The dilemma, so depicted, represents a reconfiguration of what, as a zealous Jew, he would have perceived to be humanity’s plight: “It was only the revelation of Christ as the saviour of all that convinced him that all men, both Jew and Gentile, were enslaved to sin. Before then, he must have distinguished between Jews, who were righteous (despite occasional transgressions) and ‘Gentile sinners’ (Gal 2:15)” (Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 499). On the other hand, a negative portrayal of Israel’s persistent behavior under the covenant and of the consequences of their waywardness was certainly at hand, ready to be drawn upon, in both biblical and postbiblical traditions; it was hardly an ex nihilo creation of the apostle. Cf. Thielman, From Plight to Solution, and Elliott, Survivors.



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(Rom 5:20). As for Abraham, he – like Paul himself, zealous Jew though he was – is among the “ungodly” for whom justification is only possible by faith (4:3–5; 5:6). In short, Jews, for all the privileges granted them, belong, like Gentiles, to a creation infested and marred by sin; and it is beyond the power of the law to transform the “present evil age” (Gal 1:4) or to make sinners righteous (2:21; 3:21).

The “Ministry of Death” Yet privileged they were: the Sinaitic covenant and laws under which Jews lived were divinely instituted, and their institution was accompanied by a display of divine glory. Admittedly, when Paul, in Galatians, wants to persuade his readers not to take on the obligations of that covenant, its negative aspects alone are highlighted. Righteousness, Paul declares, is simply not attainable under the law (Gal 2:16, 21; 3:21); indeed, all whose claim to righteousness depends on observance of the “works of the law” are subject to the curse that the law pronounces on its transgressors (3:10).26 Paul goes on to stress that the law was not even given until 430 years after God gave promises to Abraham, and that it by no means displaced those promises (3:15–17). Nor was the law’s validity, once given, to last longer than until the appearance of Christ, the object of the Abrahamic promise (3:19). The latter was conveyed directly by God to Abraham, whereas the law was left to be passed on through subordinates (3:18–20). Though not opposed to the promise, the law served only to supervise the imprisonment of people “under sin” until, with the “coming” of “faith,” they would be set free (3:21–25). The covenant of Mount Sinai brought enslavement to its subjects (4:24).27 … It is easy to forget, while reading Galatians, that the law and covenant of Mount Sinai were divine institutions.28 26 

On the interpretation of this verse, see my Perspectives, 375 n. 66. nature of Paul’s argument in these chapters should be carefully noted. He opposes the notion that the Galatian Christians should be circumcised, not because this part of a still valid Mosaic economy does not apply to Gentiles, but because of limitations inherent in the Mosaic economy itself. Righteousness was simply not achievable by its terms. Lacking the means to justify sinners, it could only curse and enslave them. In the plan of God, the economy and laws of Mount Sinai played an important but temporary role as guardian of God’s people until Messiah should come and deliver them. For Gentile believers in Christ to be circumcised now would be a disaster, not because they would be unnecessarily taking on requirements binding only on Jews, but because they would be abandoning Christ, whose death is the sole means by which Jews and Gentiles alike can find righteousness; and they would be embracing life under a covenant that can only condemn its (inevitably sinful) subjects. 28  That they were divine in origin can nonetheless be read between the lines even in 27  The

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That point is made explicitly in 2 Corinthians and Romans; still, the plight of those living under the law remains very much what it was in Galatians. God’s glory (Paul reminds the Corinthians) was revealed when God’s law was given; so great was the glory on Moses’ face that the people of Israel could not bear to see it (2 Cor 3:7). Yet the service (“ministry”) of God that it introduced could be summed up as one of “condemnation” (3:9) and “death” (3:7). Though promising life and blessing to those who obeyed its commands, the law also threatened those who disobeyed them with death and cursing – and only the latter outcome is realized among sinful human beings (the exclusively negative outcome of life under the law in 2 Cor 3:7, 9 thus matches that in Gal 3:10).29 Furthermore, as in Galatians, the law is conceded only a temporary validity (2 Cor 3:11; Gal 3:19, 23–25). In Romans, as noted above, Paul goes to considerable lengths to defend the goodness of the law and its commandments (7:7–25); but he is compelled to do so because the lot of those living under the law is depicted no differently than in Galatians and 2 Corinthians. Righteousness under the law is not possible (3:20); what the law brings is “knowledge” of sin (3:20; 7:7), a provocation to sin (7:5, 7–8), an exacerbation of sin (5:20), a legal foundation for the punishment of sin (4:15). That being the case, the effective purpose of the law is merely to highlight the profundity of human alienation from God. If the “ministry” introduced by Moses brought “condemnation” and “death,” that of the new covenant under which Paul serves is one of “rightGalatians. The fundamental principle of the Sinaitic covenant and law is spelled out in a quotation from sacred Scripture (3:12, citing Lev 18:5). The love commandment (Lev 19:18) is said (in Gal 5:14) to sum up the whole law, and to be something that believers should “fulfill.” It is, moreover, God’s purpose in giving the law that is summed up in the words “because of transgressions” in 3:19; and God’s design for the limited temporal validity of the law is in view when Paul adds “until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.” And if transgression of the law brings a divine curse (3:10), then its terms must articulate divine demands. 29  At no point in Paul’s letters does he pause to consider the claim, axiomatic among Jews, that the law provides for the atonement of sins inevitably and regrettably committed even by those otherwise oriented toward serving God. Had he thought the subjects of the covenant were guilty merely of particular indiscretions, then the provisions of the Mosaic covenant for their atonement might have been an issue. But if the subjects of the covenant are incorrigible sinners, as Paul believes they are, then no Jew of his day would have denied Paul’s further claim that the Mosaic covenant condemns them. Paul thus differs from other Jews not so much in his understanding of the requirements of the covenant as in his assessment of human sinfulness. Cf. Winninge, Sinners and the Righteous, 264, 306–307; Laato, Paul and Judaism; and my “Anthropological ‘Pessimism’” [chapter 4 in this volume]. The point, then, of saying that “no flesh will be justified by works of the law” (Gal 2:16) is that God’s favor cannot be enjoyed by sinners under a covenant that demands compliance with its laws.



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eousness”30 and “life” (2 Cor 3:7–9). The opening chapters of Romans supply the thinking behind these claims. In brief: 1. All human beings are subject to the divine demand to do what is good (Rom 2:6–11). 2. The universal requirement finds paradigmatic expression when God gives his law to a favored people (Rom 2:17–20). 3. Israel’s failure to observe the law brought upon themselves its condemnation and death, as the “ungodliness and unrighteousness” of all humankind evoke God’s wrath (2 Cor 3:7, 9; Rom 1:18; 2:12; 3:9–20). 4. Into a situation in which Jews and non-Jews alike had failed to attain righteousness by meeting God’s demands, God has “now” intervened to make “righteousness” and “life” possible “apart from law” (Rom 3:21–22; 2 Cor 3:7–9): a righteousness and life made possible by the death of Christ that atoned for sins (Rom 3:24–26), and granted extraordinarily to sinners who respond in faith to the good news of salvation (3:21–26).

The “Weakness of the Law” In Romans 8:3, Paul, summing up the dilemma depicted in 7:7–25, identifies the “weakness of the law” as its inability to cope with “sin in the flesh.” Though itself “holy” (7:12) and “spiritual” (7:14), when it encounters those who are “flesh-ly” and “sold under sin,” it demonstrates rather than overcomes the “surpassing sinfulness of sin” (7:13–14). The latter is first overcome in One who, in the very “likeness of sinful flesh,” nonetheless lived righteously, and who, again in that very flesh, died “for sin” (8:3; cf. 5:18–19). His is not, however, an isolated triumph, but one that opens to others – those who, by sharing in his “death to sin,” are no longer “in the flesh” (6:6, 10–11; 8:9) – the possibility of living, not “according to the flesh,” but “according to the Spirit”: in them the law is “fulfilled” (8:4). Interpreters of Paul have frequently suggested that the apostle identifies the failure of those living “under the law” as their distortion of the law’s true nature and purpose. Jews (on one such reading)31 turn the law’s demand for obedience into an invitation to win God’s recognition by their achievements in observing the law: a law that calls for radical submissiveness before God is thus distorted into an opportunity for self-assertion. Or (on 30 

The term, in this context, effectively means “acquittal”; cf. Rom 5:16, 18. of Rudolf Bultmann; see my summary of his work, with references, in Perspectives, 150–154. 31  That

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another such reading)32 Jewish ethnocentrism misunderstands God’s gift of the law to Israel as signaling a privileged status that exempts Jews from judgment; and it leads them to invest too much of their identity in their distinctiveness from Gentiles. Against such readings, it is remarkable how Paul persists in speaking, not of Jewish misunderstandings of the law, but of the inability of the law itself to convey righteousness (Rom 3:20; Gal 2:16, 21; 3:21) or life (Gal 3:21) to human beings “under sin.” Not, of course, that God’s law is seen as the problem: human sinfulness is the problem. But Paul repeatedly makes the point that the law is not the tool to overcome it. Far from misunderstanding the law, those who pursue a righteousness based on observance of its commands follow the path spelled out in the law itself (Rom 10:5; Gal 3:12, citing Lev 18:5). But that road to righteousness proves non-viable for sinners.33 For sinners, righteousness can only be found “apart from law” (Rom 3:21).

“Beloved on Account of the Fathers” Finally, we must recall that, for the Paul of Romans 9–11, there is more to Israel’s story than its present condition reveals. Israel, the objects of God’s blessings (Rom 9:4–5), has now “stumbled” in unbelief (i. e., in the gospel; 9:32–33; 11:11, 20, 23); because of unbelief, many physical descendants of Abraham have been cut off like branches from the “olive tree” of God’s people (11:17–22). Nonetheless, Israel remains “beloved on account of the fathers,” to whom God’s promises were given (11:28). And God’s promises, once given, cannot fail (9:6); the “calling” of God is “irrevocable” (11:29). Somehow (Paul does not venture to say how) Israel’s unbelief – in which they must not “remain” if they are to find their place again as God’s people (11:23) – will give way to faith;34 Israel’s “ungodliness” – which necessarily makes them the objects of God’s wrath (1:18) – will be “banished” (11:26); and then, in spite of their current “disobedience” – while non-Jews, by believing in the gospel, find mercy – they will themselves experience God’s mercy (11:32). “And so all Israel will be saved” (11:26). This climax to the story of Israel Paul labels a “mystery” 32 That of James D. G. Dunn; see my summary, with references, in Perspectives, 183–192. 33  Such, Paul believes, was the situation before as well as after Christ came (indeed, it was the situation that necessitated Christ’s coming). The righteousness of even an Abraham or a David was not the result of their (righteous) “works” in compliance with the law, but a gift of divine forgiveness (so Rom 4:1–8). 34  Cf. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 195; Donaldson, “Sonderweg,” 51.



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(11:25); but he finds it as inevitable as it is incomprehensible, and for the same reason: Israel’s ultimate salvation is included in the purposes of a God whose ways transcend all human understanding (11:33–36). Bibliography Barclay, John M. G. Obeying the Truth: Paul’s Ethics in Galatia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991. – “Paul Among Diaspora Jews: Anomaly or Apostate?” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 60 (1995): 89–120. Barrett, C. K. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Second edition. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1971. Baumgarten, A. I. “The Name of the Pharisees.” Journal of Biblical Literature 102 (1983): 411–428. Chester, Stephen J. Conversion at Corinth: Perspectives on Conversion in Paul’s Theology and the Corinthian Church. London: T. & T. Clark, 2003. Donaldson, Terence L. “Jewish Christianity, Israel’s Stumbling and the Sonderweg Reading of Paul.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 29 (2006): 27–54. – Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional World. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997. Dunn, James D. G. The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998. Elliott, Mark Adam. The Survivors of Israel: A Reconsideration of the Theology of Pre-Christian Judaism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. Holmberg, Bengt. “Jewish Versus Christian Identity in the Early Church?” Revue biblique 105 (1993): 397–425. – “The Life in the Diaspora Synagogues: An Evaluation.” In The Ancient Synagogue: From its Origins until 200 CE, edited by Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2003, 219–232. – “Understanding the First Hundred Years of Christian Identity.” In Exploring Early Christian Identity, edited by Bengt Holmberg. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008, 1–32. Horrell, David G. “‘No Longer Jew or Greek’: Paul’s Corporate Christology and the Construction of Christian Community.” In Christology, Controversy and Community: New Testament Essays in Honour of David R. Catchpole, edited by David G. Horrell and Christopher M. Tuckett. Leiden: Brill, 2000, 321–344. Kümmel, W. G. Römer 7 und das Bild des Menschen im Neuen Testament. Munich: Christian Kaiser, 1974. Laato, Timo. Paul and Judaism: An Anthropological Approach. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995. Longenecker, Bruce. “On Israel’s God and God’s Israel: Assessing Supersessionism in Paul.” Journal of Theological Studies 58 (2007): 26–44. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. Heidenapostel aus Israel: Die jüdische Identität des Paulus nach ihrer Darstellung in seinen Briefen. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1992. Runesson, Anders. “Inventing Christian Identity: Paul, Ignatius, and Theodosius I.” In Exploring Early Christian Identity, edited by Bengt Holmberg. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008, 59–92.

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Sanders, E. P. Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE – 66 CE. London: SCM, 1992. – Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977. – Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983. Schweitzer, Albert. The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. London: A. & C. Black, 1931. Thielman, Frank. From Plight to Solution: A Jewish Framework for Understanding Paul’s View of the Law in Galatians and Romans. Leiden: Brill, 1989. Tomson, Peter J. Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990. Westerholm, Stephen. Jesus and Scribal Authority. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1978. – “Paul’s Anthropological ‘Pessimism’ in its Jewish Context.” In Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, edited by John M. G. Barclay and Simon Gathercole. London: T. & T. Clark, 2006, 71–98. – Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Winninge, Mikael. Sinners and the Righteous: A Comparative Study of the Psalms of Solomon and Paul’s Letters. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1995.

Chapter 21

Is Nothing Sacred? Holiness in the Writings of Paul Much changed, yet much remained the same when Paul, the zealous Pharisee,1 became a follower and apostle of Jesus. An examination of Paul’s use of terminology related to holiness provides ample illustration both of the discontinuity – in some areas, the radical discontinuity – and, at the same time, of fundamental areas of continuity2 in Paul’s life and thinking before and after the time when (to use Paul’s words) “God … was pleased to reveal his Son to me.”3 Unless both aspects are kept in mind, the apostle will inevitably be misunderstood. 1. Paul4 was never more traditional than when he referred to the Jewish scriptures as “holy” (Rom 1:2; cf. 2 Tim 3:15); and he acknowledged the same scriptures (“the law and the prophets” [Rom 3:21]) as sacred after as before he became a follower of Jesus Christ.5 They are holy because their words were spoken by God (cf. Rom 3:2; 9:25; 2 Cor 6:1–2, 16–18), and they remain a vehicle through which God speaks to his people (Rom 4:23–24; 15:4; 1 Cor 9:8–10; 10:11). Already in the notion of holy Scripture, it is thus implicit that God, who, as holy, is divinely “other” than all things created, nonetheless communicates with his human creatures, addressing them through his (holy) word(s). It follows that, for readers – like Paul – sensitive to the sacredness of Scripture, its word is authoritative, the last 1  At this point of the story, the Acts of the Apostles refers to him as Saul (8:1; 9:1, etc.). As a result. the name Saul is sometimes used of his pre-Damascus days, Paul of his life thereafter. Given, however, that the two are merely alternative names, I use that by which he is more commonly known throughout this paper. 2  For a broader discussion (covering the entire New Testament), see Barton, “Holiness.” 3  Gal 1:15–16. (Biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version.) Speaking elsewhere of the same event, Paul claimed to be the “last” of many to whom the risen Jesus appeared (1 Cor 15:3–8; cf. 9:1). According to Acts, the encounter took place on the road to Damascus, a claim that finds somewhat ambiguous support in Gal 1:17. It will be convenient to allow “Damascus” to stand as an abbreviated designation for the event, and to speak of Paul’s “pre-” and “post-Damascus” days. 4  Since all the letters ascribed to Paul in the New Testament stand in some relation to the historical apostle, I cite, in what follows, even the disputed letters as additional support for points being made. But my argument is based on the undisputed epistles. 5  I am not assuming that Paul, at any point in his life, could have provided a precise list of which books were part of “Scripture.” My point is only that his views of the matter were not altered by “Damascus.”

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word in matters of dispute (e. g., Gal 3:6–13). Nor is the influence of the divine scriptures on Paul limited to those passages in his writings in which he cites or alludes to particular texts. Raised as he was to know and obey the scriptures, his vocabulary and entire thought-world have been decisively shaped by this training.6 Here, if anywhere, we may speak of an area of absolutely fundamental continuity. But Jews in Paul’s day read the same scriptures in different ways. For most, the commandments of the Mosaic Torah represented the true center of Scripture, with the prophets and writings serving to confirm and illustrate their significance.7 This – to judge from his devotion to the law (Phil 3:5–6; cf. Gal 1:13–14) – was likely the case for Paul himself in his preDamascus days. The commands of Torah remained crucial for the sectarians at Qumran; but Scripture was also thought to contain mysterious references to their own day and to decisive events in the history of their own community.8 This approach to Scripture bears a closer resemblance to the way Paul read Scripture as a follower of Jesus Christ (see, e. g., Rom 15:3; Gal 3:16). Some scholars of Second Temple Judaism believe that there were Jews of the period for whom the centrality of divine revelation at Sinai was displaced by revelations purportedly given to Enoch.9 It follows that Paul did not become un-Jewish when, after Damascus, he read the same scriptures very differently than before. Nonetheless, the discontinuity must be acknowledged: once God had “reveal[ed] his Son to [Paul],” it was inevitable that the apostle would see the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah as the climax of God’s dealings with Israel – and that he would find a different focus in the scriptures relating the history of those dealings. Thus, when Paul speaks of “the holy scriptures” in Romans 1:2, it is to invoke their testimony to “the gospel of God … concerning [God’s] Son,” a gospel which God “promised beforehand through the prophets in the holy scriptures” (Rom 1:2–3; cf. Gal 3:8). When, later in the same epistle, he refers to “the law and the prophets,” it is to note that they attest to “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” (3:21–22). The observation that Paul’s reading of the Jewish scriptures is an area in which both continuity and discontinuity are evident is too obvious to require laboring, too important to pass over without mention. One further example must suffice. When Paul refers to Christ as “our paschal [or “Passover”] lamb” (1 Cor 5:7), we see both how decisive categories of his thought are drawn from the scriptures he learned from his childhood and how different is the perspective from which he now reads them. 6 

Cf. Dunn, Theology, 15–16, 170. For this view in rabbinic literature, see Moore, Judaism, 1.239–240. 8  See Dimant, “Literature,” 503–514. 9  See, e. g., Boccaccini, Middle Judaism, 79, 133; Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 50–56. 7 



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2. If a superficial look would suggest that Scripture marked an unambiguous area of continuity between Paul’s pre- and post-Damascus days, a similarly superficial look might suggest that the Mosaic law represented an area of radical discontinuity: are there not texts in which Paul flatly consigns the law’s validity to the past? Here, too, however, the issue is not simple, nor the question of continuity or discontinuity straightforward. After all, no one for whom the Jewish scriptures were sacred and authoritative could dismiss the Mosaic law without further ado. Paul certainly does not. “The law,” Paul writes to the Romans, “is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Rom 7:12). Implicit in the mention of a holy law is the conviction that God, who, as holy, is divinely “other” than all things created, is nonetheless concerned that his people do what is right, good, and conducive to life; the giving of Torah’s “holy and just and good” commandments is the result, spelling out the path to life (10:5; cf. 7:10). In other passages, too, Paul stresses both the divine origin of Torah’s commands and their nature as inherently good. He writes to the Corinthians of the divine glory that accompanied the giving of the Sinaitic law and covenant (2 Cor 3:7–11). Believing that non-Jews as well as Jews are required by God to do what is “good,” Paul finds the content of the universally required good in the moral demands of Mosaic law: Jews, informed by these commandments, are in a position to instruct non-Jews of their mutual obligations (Rom 2:17–22). Though Paul (as we shall see) does not think believers in Christ are “under the law,” he still insists that the righteous behavior they are bound to exhibit is in no conflict with the demands of Moses (Gal 5:22–23), but in fact “fulfills” them (Rom 8:4; 13:8–10; Gal 5:14).10 At every point, Paul proceeds on the understanding that the Mosaic law was divinely given and sacred. Yet the place of the Mosaic law in the divine scheme of things required rethinking if Jesus was indeed God’s Messiah, and his death and resurrection the focus of God’s redemptive activity. On the one hand, the Mosaic law and covenant prescribed obedience to its commands as Israel’s path to righteousness and the enjoyment of life in God’s favor (Paul cites Lev 18:5 to this effect [Rom 10:5; Gal 3:12], though many other texts would have served his purpose equally well); on the other hand, it seemed clear to Paul that, had righteousness and blessing actually been attainable under the Mosaic economy, there would have been no need for Messiah to die (Gal 2:21; cf. 3:21). Predictably, Paul finds the resolution to this apparent dilemma by drawing on another theme in the Jewish scriptures: the universal sinfulness of humankind, reflected in Israel’s own history of unfaithfulness to God’s law. If humanity’s whole “mindset” is such that “it does not submit 10 

Cf. Westerholm, Perspectives, 433–439.

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to God’s law – indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom 8:7–8), then the sacredness of the law is by no means impugned by the claim that, in practice, Torah does not prove the path to the life it promises. Quite simply, Torah’s terms have not been met.11 Such is Paul’s argument in Romans 7: while the demands of the law are holy, the practical effect of imposing them upon rebellious human beings has been to accent their rebelliousness and (so the argument of Galatians 3) subject them to the condemnation and curse pronounced by the law against transgressors.12 Hence, in the same passage in which Paul speaks of the divine glory that accompanied the giving of the Mosaic covenant, he sums up its “ministry” as one of “condemnation” (i. e., of transgressors) and “death” (2 Cor 3:7–11). In Romans, Paul cites a chain of texts from the Jewish scriptures to demonstrate the universality of human sin and culpability before God (3:10–18). Then, at the conclusion of the very section in which he earlier summed up the terms of life under the law in the words “The doers of the law … will be justified” (2:13), Paul adds: “‘No human being will be justified in [God’s] sight’ by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin” (3:20, paraphrasing Ps 143:2). Nothing now hinders the proclamation of the “gospel of God” (Rom 1:1) and of its path to righteousness “apart from law … through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (3:21–22). Paul is thus able to grant the sacredness of the Mosaic law at the same time as he limits its effect to highlighting human “imprisonment” under sin13 – a 11 Paul’s radical assessment of universal human rebelliousness and sin is hardly a product of a purportedly pessimistic disposition or (pre-Damascus) environment; rather, it appears a natural conclusion to draw from the conviction that Messiah’s death was required for humanity’s redemption. After speaking of Paul’s view of sin as “stern,” Marguerite Shuster (“Sin,” 546) adds: “The heart of Paul’s thought is Jesus Christ, become incarnate to deal with sin (Rom 8:3), crucified and risen for the salvation of humankind; and no conception of sin that does not require so radical a remedy can be sufficient.” Cf. also Westerholm, “Pessimism,” 71–98 [chapter 4 in this volume]. 12 Gal 3:10 is sometimes read as though Paul thought a single transgression in an otherwise perfect life was sufficient to evoke Torah’s curse on transgressors; the question is then asked why Paul disregards Torah’s provisions for atonement. But Paul’s argument in Rom 1:18–3:20; 5:12–8:8 makes it clear that he believed all human beings (“in the flesh”) are incorrigible sinners; and no Jew of his day would have denied his claim that such people are condemned by the Mosaic covenant. In this regard, the radical change that takes place in Paul’s post-Damascus thinking pertains rather to his assessment of human sinfulness than to his understanding of the requirements of the Mosaic covenant. Cf. Winninge, Sinners and the Righteous, 264, 306–307; and, on Gal 3:10, Westerholm, Perspectives, 375 n. 66. 13  The view that the law was the means by which God administered the affairs of humanity “under sin” led Paul to make a statement that may well mark his most radical departure from pre-Damascus thinking: to the Galatians, he writes that he had to “die” to the law if he was to “live” for God (2:19; cf. Rom 7:6).



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necessary prelude to the redemption offered in Christ – and the period of its validity to the era from Moses until Christ (Gal 3:17–25). Believers in Christ are now no longer “under” the law (Rom 6:14–15; 1 Cor 9:20; cf. Gal 3:23–25; 4:4–5; 5:18), and Paul must find other ways to articulate their moral obligations than by simply repeating commands from Torah, even where the overlap is most obvious (e. g., 1 Cor 6:12–20; 10:14–22). Given (as noted earlier) that Paul believes the “good” required of all human beings is spelled out in the moral demands of Torah, what this in effect means is that Paul expects the content of Torah’s “moral” demands14 to be evident in Christian behavior; but he tends to articulate that obligation in different terms and to arrive at it on different grounds. As for Torah’s “ritual” commands, they simply fall by the wayside.15 In Romans 14, Paul insists that 14 

Paul himself does not distinguish between Torah’s “moral” and “ritual” demands, nor does he use this vocabulary. It is thus easy to sympathize with Kazen’s desire to avoid imposing such terminology on the texts (Halakhah, 207); unfortunately, workable alternatives are difficult to find (cf. Lockett, “Review”). Some convenient terminology is needed to distinguish between, on the one hand, the commandment to love one’s neighbor and the prohibitions of murder, adultery, stealing, and coveting – each of which Paul affirms (cf. Rom 13:8–10) – and, on the other hand, dietary laws, purity regulations, laws for Sabbath observance, and the like, which are treated very differently. For our limited purposes here, the traditional language of “moral” and “ritual” must serve. For further discussion of the issue and its relation to literal and metaphorical language of purity, see Haber, Essays, 94–106. 15  Like other early Christians (e. g., Heb 10:1; cf. Haber, Essays, 149), Paul presumably believed that ritual aspects of Torah served to foreshadow (and thus, in effect, to provide an interpretive framework for understanding) aspects of the redemption and new life made possible through Christ. This is clearly the case in particular instances (e. g., Rom 3:25; 1 Cor 5:7; Col 2:16–17), though Paul never addresses the issue in a general way. Since Albert Schweitzer (Mysticism, 192–196), it has sometimes been argued, on the basis of 1 Cor 7:17–20, that Paul believed Jewish Christians should continue to observe the ritual demands of Torah: to alter their way of life (and thus the “status quo”) would attribute importance to what is really indifferent. But though the indifference of circumcision is indeed explicit in 1 Cor 7:19 (as in Gal 5:6; 6:15), nothing is said more broadly about observance of Jewish ritual law: the status of married or unmarried, slave or free are the topics of discussion here, the conditions that Paul advises not to alter – and even in these cases, his “rule” seems to be a “rule of thumb” that permits exceptions (7:28). See Horrell, “Corporate Christology, 337–339. Elsewhere Paul makes general statements about freedom from the law that (i) must apply in the first place to Jewish believers, who were, after all, those once “under the law”; that (ii) do not allow a continuing obligation to its statutes (How can people continue to be obligated to a law from which they have been “discharged” [Rom 7:6], to which they have “died” [Rom 7:4, 6; cf. Gal 2:19], which they are no longer “under” [Rom 6:14–15; cf. Gal 5:18]?); and that (iii) never distinguish between the obligations of Jewish and Gentile believers. Paul himself (a Jewish believer!) writes in 1 Cor 9:20–21 that he lived “outside the law” when among Gentiles, though – for strategic, missionary purposes – he “became as a Jew” when among Jews. (Barrett, First Corinthians, 211 observes that Paul could only “become as a Jew” if he had otherwise ceased to live as one.) That Paul expected Jewish Christians not to observe Jewish dietary laws at the common meals of Christians is noted by Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 177–179, and Holmberg, “Identity,” 397–425. And Romans 14 shows clearly

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believers of weak faith be allowed to follow their conscience in what foods they eat and what days they regard as holy; but he undermines any abiding rationale for doing so when he treats such issues as purely a matter of personal conviction: “Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. … I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean” (Rom 14:5, 14).16 For the majority of even Jewish believers in Christ, the future did not lie in Torah observance. So the radical discontinuity of the apostle Paul’s understanding of the Mosaic law must be allowed; but it must be qualified by an acknowledgement that, even as an apostle, Paul necessarily found a place in God’s plan for the sacred laws of Torah. 3. It follows that for Paul the apostle, the community of the people of God is marked, not by its adherence to the regulations of Mosaic law, but by faith in Jesus Christ; and, as Paul explicitly notes, the latter but not the former criterion means that terms of admission to the people of God are equally accessible to Jews and non-Jews alike (Rom 3:28–30). At times, Paul designates such people simply as “those who believe” (or “believers”) – no further definition is required (1 Cor 1:21; Gal 3:22; 1 Thess 1:7; 2:10, etc.). Yet this area of radical discontinuity is somewhat concealed (or counterbalanced) by Paul’s adoption of a term from the Jewish scriptures as his most frequent designation of the (new) people of God: they are “the holy ones” (οἱ ἅγιοι; in English translations, usually “the saints”; so, e. g., Rom 8:27; 12:13; 16:2, 15; cf. Exod 19:6; Lev 19:2, etc.). Implicit in the notion of a holy people is the conviction that God, who, as holy, is divinely “other” than all that he has created, nonetheless acts to bring human beings into relationship with himself, imparting to them something of his holiness.17 In the assurance that Paul thought it appropriate for believers with a “strong” conscience – he counts himself among them – to treat all days the same and to eat any food they liked; cf. 1 Cor 10:23–11:1, where ethnicity plays no part in a discussion of what food believers may eat. At times, Gal 5:3 has been cited as support for the claim that all who are circumcised (including Jewish believers) are bound to observe the laws of Torah (e. g., Tomson, Jewish Law, 67–68). That Paul thinks circumcision marks entry into the obligations of the Sinaitic law and covenant is clear. But he is not speaking here of Jewish believers who, though once so obligated, have (to repeat!) “died” to the law, been “discharged” (or “set free” [Gal 5:1]) from the law, are no longer “under the law,” etc. His point is simply that Gentile believers wondering whether they should become circumcised must know what circumcision entails: they would be subjecting themselves to obligations from which believers have otherwise been set free (cf. 4:21–5:1). 16  Cf. Barclay, “Law,” 287–308. 17 Webster, Holiness, 52 quotes America’s most famous theologian: “‘[I]t is fit’, says Jonathan Edwards, that ‘as there is an infinite fountain of holiness, moral excellence and beauty, so it should flow out in communicated holiness.’”



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that those to whom he writes have been so touched by God (cf. 1 Thess 1:4–7; 2:13), Paul addresses the “saints” who find themselves in Rome, or Corinth, or Philippi (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:2; 2 Cor 1:1; Phil 1:1). As “saints” (or “holy ones”), they have been “sanctified” (or “made holy”), a process that necessarily entails the removal of every defilement; so Paul speaks of the initial “sanctification” of believers, made possible by the atoning self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Cor 1:2, 30; Eph 5:25–27), probably associated with Christian baptism,18 and effected through the divine Spirit (Rom 15:16; 2 Thess 2:13). The “defilements” from which they were cleansed when “sanctified” were, for Paul, exclusively moral.19 Moreover, just as the “holy” people of God are summoned in the scriptures to live “holy” lives (e. g., Lev 11:44; 19:2), so growth in holiness is the will of God for, and the essential goal of, believers in the Pauline communities. But again, for Paul, such holiness is exclusively a moral, not ritual, matter (Rom 6:1–23; 2 Cor 7:1; 1 Thess 4:3–8; 5:23); and it is enabled by the gift of the divine Spirit (cf. Rom 7:6; Gal 5:22–23; 1 Thess 4:7–8). 4. Though, in Paul’s normal usage, “the saints” (or “holy ones”) are the same as “the believers,” three exceptions should be noted. i. In 1 Corinthians 7:14, Paul speaks specifically of the unbelieving spouse of a believer as “made holy” (or “sanctified”), and of their children as “holy.” In the context, Paul is addressing the question whether believers married to unbelievers should divorce their spouses. Paul’s counsel is that as long as the unbelieving partner is willing to continue the relationship, the believer should take no action: “it is to peace that God has called you” (7:15). Since the usage of holiness terminology here departs so markedly from Paul’s norm, we may suppose that the formulation is ad hoc, perhaps in response to a query whether or not the believing partner and any children of the mixed relationship are “defiled” because the other partner lacks faith.20 Paul, in denying this possibility, claims that the influence goes in the other direction: something of the believer’s holiness is imparted to the unbelieving spouse and children.21 Clearly, degrees of holiness are envisaged, since as long as the unbelieving spouse remains without faith, he or she – though in some sense “made holy” – is still only a potential 18  An

6:11.

allusion to baptism is frequently seen in the reference to “washing” in 1 Cor

19 Note, e. g., 1 Cor 6:9–11, where the representative list of evils from which, “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God,” believers have been “washed,” “sanctified,” and “justified” is exclusively moral. Cf. also Gal 5:19–21. 20  2 Cor 6:14–7:1 might itself suggest this possibility, and might indeed seem to recommend the dissolution of mixed marriages. 21  Cf. Barrett, First Corinthians, 164–165; Fee, First Corinthians, 299–302; Thiselton, First Corinthians, 528–530.

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candidate for salvation (so 7:16). Though not (yet?) “sanctified … in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (cf. 6:11), the partner of a believer (Paul implies) can hardly remain untouched by the proximity of the divine presence (see the discussion below of believers as God’s “temple”) and grace. ii. Though, in Paul’s normal usage, all believers – Jews and non-Jews alike – are “the saints,” in a few Pauline texts the designation is applied in a more limited way to a specific community, that of Jewish believers in Jerusalem (Rom 15:25–26, 31; 1 Cor 16:1; 2 Cor 8:4; 9:1, 12). In each of these cases, Paul is discussing the funds collected from his (largely non-Jewish) churches for the benefit of the impoverished “saints” in Jerusalem. “That Paul can refer to the Jerusalem church so consistently simply as ‘the saints’ clearly implies that the Jerusalem church held a central place among all the churches, particularly in the continuity it provided between the ‘saints’ of Israel in the past and the ‘saints’ of the diaspora churches.”22 iii. That Paul adapts holiness terminology used in Scripture of Israel and applies it to believers in Christ might suggest that he sees the latter community supplanting or superseding the former. In Romans 11, however, Paul emphatically repudiates the suggestion that God has “rejected his people” (i. e., Israel). The rejected suggestion finds initial plausibility in the realization that the majority of Jews in Paul’s day have not believed in “the gospel of God” (cf. Rom 1:1). Paul’s own fervent desire and prayer for his compatriots is that they will nonetheless come to faith and “be saved” (10:1; cf. 9:1–5; 11:13–14). But he also sees a precedent in history for the present state of Israel: in the apostasy that marked the days of Elijah, God’s continuing commitment to his people was marked by the existence of a remnant who had not “bowed the knew to Baal” (11:2–4). Similarly, in his own day, Paul claims, Jews who believe in Christ represent the “remnant” whose very existence demonstrates God’s continued faithfulness to Israel (11:1–6). Ultimately, Paul believes that Israel as a whole will abandon its unbelief23 and be saved (11:26; cf. v. 23). Such an outcome he deems inevitable, given Israel’s divine election: “for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (11:29). Paul uses the language of holiness in 11:16 to make the crucial point: “If the part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; and if the root is holy, then the branches also are holy.” That all Israel has a part in God’s redemptive history follows (Paul claims) from the beginnings God has made with the “first fruits” of the dough (the language is taken from LXX Num 15:18–21), the “root” of the tree. Scholars debate 22 Dunn,

Theology, 708. this as an essential stage in the divine scheme as Paul envisages it, see Donaldson, “Jewish Christianity”; Longenecker, “Supersessionism”; Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 171–179, 192–196. 23  For



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whether the language of “first fruits” and “root” refers to the patriarchs of Israel (to whom God promised that their descendants would be his people) or to the current “remnant” of Jewish believers in Christ (whose existence proves God’s continued dealings with his people).24 What is important for our purposes is not affected by this ambiguity – and marks yet another instance of continuity in the midst of discontinuity in Paul’s thinking: through faith in Christ (herein lies the discontinuity), Paul believes that the people of Israel will one day experience the redemption promised in sacred Scripture. 5. Very frequently, Paul uses the adjective “holy” with the noun “spirit.” Since human beings themselves have a “spirit,” the addition of the adjective proves a convenient way to indicate that the divine spirit, the “Holy Spirit,” is intended.25 The terminology has, of course, ample precedent in the Jewish scriptures (e. g., Isa 63:10; Ps 51:13 [Eng. trans., 51:11]), as does the notion that, in the day God redeems his people, God’s Spirit will enable them to live as they ought (so Ezek 36:27; cf. Rom 7:6; 8:4; Gal 5:16–25, etc.). This is not the place for an extended study of Paul’s understanding of the Spirit;26 one significant feature, however, is worth noting. Like other early Christians, Paul believed that the day of God’s redemption had already been inaugurated by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but that it would not be complete until Christ appeared again in glory (cf. Rom 5:8–11; 8:22–25; 13:11). Thus, though an outpouring of God’s Spirit upon his people was associated in Scripture with God’s redemption of his people (cf. also Joel 3:1–2 [Eng. trans., 2:28–29]), for Paul, the gift of the Spirit marks only the “first fruits” of believers’ redemption (Rom 8:23; cf. 2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:13–14); that is, it represents only a “first installment” of the promised blessings, though one that carries with it the assurance of gifts to come. 6. Is nothing sacred for Paul? It appears not.27 The distinction (familiar from the Jewish scriptures; e. g., Lev 10:10; Ezek 22:26) between the holy and the profane (or “common”) does not appear in his writings; and given his 24  See Barrett, Romans, 200–201; Cranfield, Romans, 2.563–565; Fitzmyer, Romans, 613–614. 25  Note how “Spirit of God” and “Holy Spirit” are parallel in 1 Cor 12:3. “The Holy Spirit of God” in Eph 4: 30 takes no chances on ambiguity. Ambiguity remains, however, in 2 Cor 6:6, since here the “holy spirit” (so a literal rendering) may be that of the apostles (as in NRSV “holiness of spirit”). Similarly, Paul enjoins members of various Christian communities to greet each other with a “holy kiss” (Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; 1 Thess 5:26): the adjective serves to distinguish the appropriate embrace from those which – as even an apostle is aware – cannot be so designated. 26  For a magisterial study of the subject, see Fee, Holy Spirit. 27  As there is nothing inherently “unclean”; cf. Rom 14:14, 20; 1 Cor 10:25–26; 1 Tim 4:3–5.

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setting aside of the ritual aspects of Mosaic law, the omission cannot be dismissed as accidental. On the other hand, a number of significant passages in his writings show once again how his language and thinking continued to be shaped even by this aspect of the sacred text.28 The existence of a priesthood in Israel was closely tied to distinctions between sacred and profane: priests were specially consecrated to serve in the sacred space of God’s sanctuary, to officiate in the offering of sacrifices, to eat designated portions of what was offered to God (cf. 1 Cor 9:13), and to instruct in the difference between sacred and profane, clean and unclean. Only metaphorical traces of this language appear in what Paul writes about the communities of believers; but they are not without interest. The Pauline communities had no designated priests; we find references instead to “bishops [or “overseers”] and deacons” (Phil 1:1; cf. Rom 16:1), or “those who labor among you, and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish you” (1 Thess 5:12; cf. Gal 6:6). But Paul borrows language associated with priesthood when he speaks of “the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15:15–16). Here Paul’s proclamation of the gospel to non-Jews, as the means by which they become members of God’s (“holy”) people, is compared to the work of a priest in bringing a consecrated (and “acceptable”) “offering” to God. The metaphor is pushed a step further in Philippians 2:17, where the faith of the Philippian believers is referred to as a “sacrifice” and “offering” to God, but where Paul – aware that his service of the gospel may soon lead to his execution (cf. Phil 1:19–24) – speaks of the possibility that he himself will be “poured out as a libation over” such a sacrifice. In Romans 12:1, Paul calls on the believers in Rome to “present [their] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,” and, in so doing, to carry out their “spiritual worship.” Here the language of sacrifice is used metaphorically for the devotion of believers’ lives and efforts to God’s service. In referring to such a “sacrifice” as “spiritual worship,” Paul may well be suggesting that it represents a “spiritualized” form of the more literal kinds of sacrifice known from Scripture and the temple cult.29

28  Cf. Klawans, Impurity, 156: “Jesus prioritized the maintenance of moral purity over the maintenance of ritual purity. Paul would appear to have taken the next step: In addition to focusing on moral impurity, he does not articulate any interest in issues relating to ritual impurity. So with Paul we see a break with the past, in his rejection of the need to maintain ritual purity, but we still see some degree of continuity in his lasting interest in the notion of moral defilement …” 29  Cf. Sanday and Headlam, Romans, 353. Note also Phil 4:18.



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Most famously, Paul speaks of believers as themselves the “temple,” or dwelling-place, of God. When he uses this language in 1 Corinthians 3:16–17 (cf. v. 9; also Eph 2:19–22), he is thinking of the community of believers: those who undermine the unity of the church need to know that they are attacking the very dwelling-place of God, a wrong that God will not leave unpunished. In 1 Corinthians 6:19, the body of the individual believer is identified as “a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God.” Again, the terminology is introduced as the basis for Pauline exhortation: a body that is the temple of God must not be defiled by sexual immorality. Comparisons are commonly drawn between these latter passages and texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls in which the sectarian community is spoken of as God’s temple.30 Certainly, there is enough similarity to remind ourselves that Paul is not un-Jewish when he gives language rooted in the temple cult a radically different application. Here, as throughout this paper, we see that Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, retains a fundamental conviction that he held already as a zealous Pharisee: the holy God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is committed to creating a people to share in his holiness, and thereby a people in whose midst he may live. Paul’s understanding of the way in which God achieves this purpose underwent a radical transformation, and the sacred scriptures themselves were subjected to a radical reinterpretation, once Paul was convinced that Jesus was indeed God’s Messiah, and that his death and resurrection were the means by which God would redeem his people and, ultimately, all creation. But the basic hope remained the same; and even the language and concepts employed in Paul’s reconstruction of the divine agenda were shaped by the sacred scriptures he learned from his youth. Bibliography Barclay, John M. G. “‘Do We Undermine the Law?’ A Study of Romans 14.1–15.6.” In Paul and the Mosaic Law, edited by James D. G. Dunn. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1996, 287–308. Barrett, C. K. The Epistle to the Romans. Second edition. London: A. & C. Black. 1991. – The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Second edition. London: A. & C. Black, 1971. Barton, Stephen C. “Dislocating and Relocating Holiness: A New Testament Study.” In Holiness Past and Present, edited by Stephen C. Barton. London: T. & T. Clark, 2003, 193–213. Boccaccini, Gabriele. Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought, 300 BCE to 200 CE. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991. Cranfield, C. E. B. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Vol. 2. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1979. 30  That these passages are to be understood metaphorically, not as indicating a literal replacement of the Jerusalem temple, is argued by Haber, Essays, 106–124.

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Dimant, Devorah. “Qumran Sectarian Literature.” In Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, edited by Michael E. Stone. Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum. Section Two. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984, 483–550. Donaldson, Terence L. “Jewish Christianity, Israel’s Stumbling and the Sonderweg Reading of Paul.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 29 (2006): 27–54. Dunn, James D. G. The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998. Fee, Gordon D. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987. – God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994. Fitzmyer, Joseph A. Romans. New York: Doubleday. 1993. Haber, Susan.“They Shall Purify Themselves”: Essays on Purity in Early Judaism. Edited by Adele Reinhartz. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008. Holmberg, Bengt. “Jewish Versus Christian Identity in the Early Church?” Revue biblique 105 (1993): 397–425. Horrell, David G. “‘No Longer Jew or Greek’: Paul’s Corporate Christology and the Construction of Christian Community.” In Christology, Controversy and Community: New Testament Essays in Honour of David R. Catchpole, edited by David G. Horrell and Christopher M. Tuckett. Leiden: Brill, 2000, 321–344. Kazen, Thomas. Jesus and Purity Halakhah: Was Jesus Indifferent to Impurity? Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2002. Klawans, Jonathan. Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Lockett, Darian R. Review of Thomas Kazen’s Jesus and Purity Halakhah: Was Jesus Indifferent to Impurity? In Review of Biblical Literature 9 (2004). Longenecker, Bruce. “On Israel’s God and God’s Israel: Assessing Supersessionism in Paul.” Journal of Theological Studies 58 (2007): 26–44. Moore, George Foot. Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of the Tannaim.Vol. 1. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927. Nickelsburg, George W. E. 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36; 81–108. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001. Sanday, William, and Arthur C. Headlam. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1902. Sanders, E. P. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983. Schweitzer, Albert. The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. London: A. & C. Black, 1931. Shuster, Marguerite. “Christian Theology: Sin and the Fall.” In The Blackwell Companion to Paul, edited by Stephen Westerholm. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, 546–560. Thiselton, Anthony C. The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. Tomson, Peter J. Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990. Webster, John. Holiness. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Westerholm, Stephen. Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. – “Paul’s Anthropological ‘Pessimism’ in its Jewish Context.” In Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, edited by John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole. London: T. & T. Clark, 2006, 71–98. Winninge, Mikael. Sinners and the Righteous: A Comparative Study of the Psalms of Solomon and Paul’s Letters. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1995.

Chapter 22

Canonical Paul and the Law More years ago than I care to compute, I met a woman on a train in Sweden whom I vaguely recognized as a fellow doctoral student at Lund University, she in Old Testament, I in New. Within a few sentences of our initial greeting, we were speaking on our one subject of commonality. I indicated that I was writing on the different approaches of Jesus and the Pharisees to certain legal issues. She appeared taken aback, though whether by the audacity or the folly of my imagining such a topic fit for a doctoral dissertation, I was not quite sure. She was writing on nautical terms in the book of Ezekiel. God bless her1 and other philologists (and textual critics), on whose work every biblical scholar is dependent; my own research and writing, however, have largely been devoted to major New Testament themes, none more central than Torah. My doctoral dissertation finished,2 I followed my supervisor’s advice and moved on to other parts of the New Testament, though retaining an interest in the interpretation of the law.3 Returning to Canada, I learned that the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies had launched a “torah/ nomos seminar”; I contributed a series of literature reviews.4 In Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters, I combined literature reviews (Part One) with my own discussion of issues related to Paul and the law (Part Two). Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics represents an updated and much expanded version of this work.

1  I am not sure that I ever knew her name, but a check of the Old Testament series of Coniectanea Biblica turns up the following: Eva Strömberg Krantz, Des Schiffes Weg mitten im Meer: Beiträge zur Erforschung der nautischen Terminologie des Alten Testaments. 2  Jesus and Scribal Authority. 3  “The Law and the ‘Just Man’”; “Letter and Spirit”; “On Fulfilling the Whole Law” [chapters 16, 17, and 15 in this volume]. 4  These were later published in Peter Richardson et al., Law in Religious Communities, 19–91. My article “Torah, Nomos, and Law” was also written for the CSBS seminar [chapter 3 in this volume].

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Paul and the Law My views on the topic have not won universal assent (in commentaries on Acts, this is referred to as litotes), but I cannot argue for them here. The focus of this paper – on Luther’s and Calvin’s premodern interpretations of Paul and the law, the differences between which continue to divide modern interpreters – nonetheless requires as background at least the following summary of what I take to be Paul’s own understanding of the subject.5 1. Human beings find themselves in an ordered world not of their making, and bound to acknowledge their Creator (Rom 1:21) and conform to the wise ordering of his creation.6 Life and divine favor are promised to those who do so. 2. The “moral” demands of the Mosaic law articulate the appropriate human response to life in God’s creation,7 though that law includes as well ordinances binding only on Jews, the observance of which marked them off from other nations as God’s people (cf. 1 Cor 9:20–21). The Mosaic law rightly promises life and divine favor to those who keep its commands (Rom 10:5; Gal 3:12); in the case of Gentiles, who were not given the Mosaic law, compliance with its moral demands is nonetheless expected, since these requirements have been “written on their hearts” (Rom 2:13–15).8 3. Adamic humanity does not, and cannot, submit to God’s law (Rom 8:7–8). As a result, the law cannot in fact serve as the path to righteousness and life in God’s favor (Rom 3:20, 28; Gal 2:16, 21; 3:10–12, 21; cf. Rom 4:13–15; 8:3). 4. The giving of the law nonetheless served to highlight, at the same time as it exacerbated, human rebellion against God and bondage to sin (Rom 3:20; 5:13, 20; 7:7–13). 5 Given that the focus of this paper is on classical interpretations of Paul’s interpretation of the law, I must beg readers’ indulgence when, for discussion of Paul’s own understanding, I repeatedly refer them to my earlier work and to the scholarly literature cited therein. In the first seven points listed here, I summarize the summary found in chapter 19 of Perspectives; references are also given below to articles where I have developed the points in question more fully. 6  Human beings are thus to live “according to nature” (cf. Rom 1:26–27), which here means according to the wisdom with which God ordered his creation. In Romans 1, Paul shows how a refusal to acknowledge the Creator is followed by a refusal to conform to the wise ordering of creation. 7  Note that doing what, for Jew and Gentile alike, is “good” in Rom 2:7, 10 is the equivalent of “doing the law” in 2:13. That (what we refer to as) the “moral” commandments are in view is clear from 2:17–27, where various “moral” commandments are cited, and where circumcision is discussed as though it were not a part of the law itself. 8  These first two points are developed further in my articles “Righteousness of the Law” and “Natural Law” [chapters 13 and 19 in this volume].



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5. The righteousness of God revealed in Jesus Christ is operative apart from law, through faith in Christ. Believers thus enjoy the status of being righteous before God that they could not attain under the terms spelled out by the law (Rom 3:20–28; 5:1; Gal 2:16). 6. Believers in Christ also enjoy new life in the Spirit (Rom 8:9–17; 2 Cor 3:6; Gal 5:16, 25). Paradoxically, a life no longer “under law” but led by the Spirit and marked by the Spirit’s fruit is one that no law can condemn (Gal 5:18, 22–23). Indeed, the love shown by such a life in effect “fulfills” the law: it constitutes the good at which the law aimed but was too “weak” (Rom 8:3) to bring about (Gal 5:14; cf. Rom 8:4; 13:8–10).9 7. Properly speaking, those “under law” are the Jewish people, to whom the law was given (Rom 9:4; cf. 3:19; 1 Cor 9:20–21), and including the earthly Jesus himself (Gal 4:4). The phrase no longer applies, however, to those Jews who, by participating (through baptism) in the death of Christ, have “died” to the law, been “redeemed” and “set free” from the law (Rom 6:14–15; 7:1–6; Gal 2:19; 4:5). Until the divinely appointed time, the law served as their “pedagogue” (“custodian” [RSV], “disciplinarian” [NRSV], “guardian” [ESV, NIV]); now that Christ has come, they are no longer under its supervision (Gal 3:23–26). At least in the first place, these texts must refer to Jewish believers. That said, at various points in Paul’s letters, it is extraordinarily difficult (and perhaps misspent energy to attempt) to limit to Jews what the apostle says about the law and the bondage to sin that it demonstrates. Such texts include several to which I have just alluded. Paul writes to “brothers [and sisters]” in Rome who have “died” to the law, been “set free from the law,” so that now they “serve [God] in the new way, that of the Spirit, not in the old way, defined by the law’s written code” (Rom 7:1–6; cf. 6:14–15). All of this must certainly apply to Jewish believers, who, as those once “under law,” were clearly in a position to “die” to its hegemony; but the Roman church to which Paul was writing had a significant if not dominant Gentile component as well (cf. 1:5–6; 11:13). That he abruptly limits his comments in Romans 7 to readers who were Jews is not self-evident. To the Galatians (3:13), Paul writes, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law.” Again, read most naturally, the first person plural pronoun embraces both Paul and his Galatian (Gentile) readers (see also 3:23–26; 4:3–7). And perhaps, in the end, it is not too difficult to imagine why Paul would have spoken to Jewish and Gentile believers alike in these terms. He certainly believed the gospel offers salvation to all, inasmuch as all have failed to do “the good” that God requires (Rom 2:6–12; 3:9–20). That “good,” required of all, is spelled out in 9 

Cf. my article “On Fulfilling the Whole Law” [chapter 15 in this volume].

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(the moral commandments of) the law of Moses, so that Jews (who possess the law in written form) are able to instruct Gentiles (who do not) of their mutual responsibility (Rom 2:17–24). Is it not natural for Paul, then, to broaden (consciously or unconsciously) the category of those “under law” to include Gentiles, since they, too, are expected to do the “good” that it articulates? And if so, they, too, can be said to have been “redeemed” from the law, to have “died” to its rule, and the like. 8. Strictly speaking, to be “under law” is to be subject to the conditions of the Mosaic covenant: those “under law” are obligated to keep its commandments and promised life in God’s favor if they do so (Rom 10:5; Gal 3:12, citing Lev 18:5), but threatened with the divine wrath and curse if they disobey (Rom 4:15; Gal 3:10, 13). That believers – Jewish and Gentile alike – are not “under law” means that believers – Jewish and Gentile alike – are no longer bound to observe its commandments as such, nor are they threatened by its sanctions.10 9. Though Paul’s claim that believers are not “under law” means (in part) that they are not obligated to observe its commandments as such, several means were nonetheless open to him to derive moral guidance from Torah. Some of these are based on the ambiguity of the term (in Greek, νόμος), which he uses most frequently of the Mosaic law code, but occasionally of the Pentateuch itself, or even the divine scriptures as a whole11 – the scriptures that, after all, were “written for our instruction” (Rom 15:4; 1 Cor 10:11). Paul does not hesitate to draw on the stories of the Pentateuch for admonition and direction (e. g., 1 Cor 10:1–12; 11:7–12). He cites Abraham as the model “father of those who believe” (Rom 4:1–25; cf. Gal 3:6–9, 29). As for the laws themselves, the proposal (adopted later by many theologians) that believers remain subject to the “moral” but not the “ritual” (or “ceremonial”) and “judicial” commandments of the law does not appear to have crossed Paul’s mind; for Paul, the law is the law, and one cannot be bound by some parts but not others (cf. Gal 5:3). Yet, although believers are free from the law as such, they are nonetheless expected to do what is “good” (cf. Rom 12:9; 13:3; 16:19), and (as we have seen) the moral demands of the law are a faithful articulation of the good God requires (cf. Rom 13:8–10). Furthermore, inasmuch as the law was divinely given, it surely remains a powerful indicator of the divine mind and thus a potential source of principles for guiding Christian behavior. Thus, it is still possible, even for one who believes that the 10  Cf. my article “Letter and Spirit” [chapter 17 in this volume]. That Paul did not think Jewish believers were bound by the law (though those with “weak” consciences were free to observe it) is maintained in my articles “The Judaism Paul Left Behind Him” and “Is Nothing Sacred?” [chapters 20 and 21 in this volume]. 11 Cf. Perspectives, 298–300.



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laws of Moses (as such) no longer apply to believers, to draw upon those laws in instructing believers. Instances where Paul himself does so, however, are rare (cf. 1 Cor 9:8–10; perhaps 14:34; note also, from the disputed epistles, Eph 6:2–3), and do not include even cases (like the discussion of immorality in 1 Cor 6, and of idolatry in 1 Cor 8–10) where unambiguous commands from Torah were ready to hand. No doubt his conviction that believers are not “under law” made him wary of confusing the issue by drawing on provisions of Torah to define Christian behavior; he preferred to establish, on specifically Christian grounds, principles for living even where these coincided precisely with Torah’s demands (e. g., 1 Cor 6:12–20; 8–10; 1 Thess 4:3–8).

Paul and Luther The coincidence between the above summary of Paul’s understanding of the law and Luther’s views on the subject is remarkable, whether one attributes it to Luther’s adroitness as a reader of Paul or to my stubborn insistence on reading the apostle through a Lutheran lens. Though personally rather partial to the former explanation, I must limit myself here to a few comments on the reformer12 and his relation to the apostle. Within every human being, Luther believes, God has implanted an awareness that we are to do to others what we want done to ourselves; Luther labels this universal awareness the “law of nature” (27.53). The Mosaic law code, on the other hand, was given specifically to the Jews and incumbent on them alone (35.164–168). Yet some of its provisions serve to spell out the content of the “law of nature” that binds all human beings. In such cases (Luther has, of course, the Decalogue primarily in mind), what the Mosaic law commands must be observed by all human beings, not because the law of Moses commands it, but because that law (in part) articulates what God requires of all (35.164, 168).  – Thus far, I believe, Luther fairly restates what was said about Paul in the first and second points listed above. More distinctively, Luther uses the term “law” for all that God requires of human beings in any part of Scripture, including the demands of Jesus in the Gospels and the admonitions of the New Testament epistles (35.162, 236–237; of course, Paul, too, speaks exceptionally of the “law of Christ” [Gal 6:2; cf. 1 Cor 9:21]); and he insists that “law,” in this sense and wherever it is found, must be rigorously distinguished from the “gospel,” with its

12 Cf. Perspectives, 27–39, where fuller documentation is given. References here are to the volume and page number in Luther’s Works, edited by Pelikan and Lehmann.

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promise of grace to those who believe.13 The gospel is necessary (and here Luther’s emphasis is certainly Pauline) because resistance to God’s will is so rooted in human nature that no one lives as God requires; thus, no one is righteous, and no one obtains God’s favor, by keeping the law. For Luther, then, the law’s primary function is to bring to our awareness the demands of God we have not met and the consequent peril of divine judgment. When the sinner, so terrified, turns for help to the gospel, the law has served its “proper” purpose (26.148, 310). Though this “proper” use of the law goes beyond anything that is explicit in Paul’s letters, its roots are surely Pauline. The apostle himself speaks of a “knowledge of sin” that comes from the law, and in Romans 3:19–20, he claims that the result of what the law says to those subject to its demands is that “every mouth” is “stopped,” and “the whole world” shown to be culpable before God (cf. also Rom 7:7, 13); moreover, the dilemma thus portrayed leads naturally to a summary of the gospel (Rom 3:21–26). We have seen that Paul himself appears, in places, to have broadened the category of those “under law” to include all of unredeemed humanity, inasmuch as the moral demands of God articulated in the law are incumbent on all. It is precisely the failure of human beings to be righteous in the ordinary sense of the word (i. e., by doing what they ought, as outlined in the law) that called for the “revelation” of a different kind of righteousness (i. e., that based on faith).14 Is Paul likely to have proclaimed the solution without mentioning the crisis that required it? Can he have offered a gospel of “salvation” (Rom 1:16; 2 Cor 6:2; 1 Thess 5:9) without mentioning the dilemma from which it provides deliverance? To be sure, Paul is not likely to have spoken of “the law” when, in his mission, he initially encountered non-Jews. It is nonetheless clear that he proclaimed to the non-Jews in Thessalonica (and elsewhere) the peril they faced at the impending divine judgment – patently, because they had failed to meet divine obligations – so that they must turn for rescue to the gospel.15 Is it not, then, both inevitable 13  An explicit distinction between “law” and “gospel” is not found in Paul’s writings; but Paul regularly draws a contrast between the law and faith (Rom 3:21–22, 28; 4:13–16; Gal 3:12, 23–25), and between the righteousness based on the law and that based on faith (the contrast is unambiguous in Phil 3:9 [cf. Rom 9:30–31], and provides by far the most natural reading of Rom 10:5–13; Gal 3:11–12 as well [cf. my Perspectives, 327 nn. 93 and 94]). Moreover, while insisting that the righteousness based on the law requires obedience to its commands (Rom 2:13; 10:5; Gal 3:12), Paul also insists on the gratuity of the righteousness based on faith (Rom 3:22–24; 4:4–5; 5:16–17; necessarily, since here it is the “ungodly” who are “found righteous” [Rom 4:5; cf. 5:6–9]). Cf. further my article “Paul and the Law” [chapter 14 in this volume]. Essentially, then, the distinction Luther draws between law and gospel seems true to Paul, even though the terminology is Luther’s own. 14  Cf. my article “Righteousness of the Law” [chapter 13 in this volume]. 15  Cf. my Justification Reconsidered, 1–22; also Perspectives, 354 n. 10.



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in principle and apparent from the epistles that Paul’s proclamation of the gospel was accompanied by that of (what Luther calls) the law? Furthermore, Luther, like Paul (on rare occasions), sees believers as free to take direction from commands of Moses that do not bind them. On the one hand, Luther insists that the laws of Moses (all the laws of Moses), as such, have never bound any but the Jews to whom they were given. On the other hand, “we should look to [Moses] for examples of outstanding laws and moral precepts” (27.15). Even the political laws serve to remind us that believers are to obey the laws of the land in which they live (26.448). In the ceremonial laws of Moses, we see that life on earth cannot proceed without some ceremonies and rituals; hence, the church rightly has its own “festivals, prescribed times, prescribed places, etc.,” so that “all things [may] be done decently and in order (1 Cor. 14:40)” (26.448). And what of the law’s moral demands? Here it must be remembered that Luther uses the term “law” not simply for the Mosaic code, but for God’s demands wherever they occur in Scripture, and that he sharply distinguishes “law” in this sense from “gospel.” Moreover, Luther insists (based on his reading of Romans 7 and Galatians 5) that the life of believers is marked throughout by a struggle with the sinful “flesh”: they are, and remain throughout their earthly lives, both “sinners” (inasmuch as sin remains a daily reality) and “righteous” (in God’s eyes, because of Christ). It follows that, throughout their earthly lives, they retain a need for the knowledge, the discipline, and the warnings that come from the law. Indeed, Luther finds in the Decalogue a summary of God’s will for human beings, and demonstrates the point in profound expositions of its commandments.16 There is in every believer’s life a time for law as well as a time for grace (26.341). But when the conscience of the believer is troubled by the ongoing struggle with sin, then grace, not law, must prevail. Here the believing bride must return to the bridal chamber with the divine Groom; law, with its demands and threats, must not be allowed to intrude (26.120).

Calvin and Canonical Paul17 While students of Paul will differ in their assessments of Luther as a reader of the apostle, it is perfectly clear that Luther’s understanding of Scripture in general, and of what Scripture more specifically says about law, is based on his reading of Paul. Consider, for example, Luther’s understanding of 16 See Treatise on Good Works (44.21–114); The Large Catechism of Martin Luther, 9–55. 17  By “canonical Paul,” I mean the letters of Paul when read with the conviction that their message coheres with that of Scripture as a whole. What Paul writes can thus be

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Christ’s moral teaching, of God’s law as extolled in Psalm 19, and of the Epistle of James. The moral teachings of Christ himself are categorized as law and contrasted with the gospel, a distinction Luther derived from Paul (cf. 26.10–11, 150). All the glories ascribed to the law in Psalm 19 are retained, but they are attributed to “the word” (“the word ‘law’ is used for God’s Word, as is common and customary in Holy Scripture” [12.142, on Ps 19:7]).18 If James differs from Paul, the solution is straightforward: James must be wrong (35.395–396).19 Generally speaking, one does not find, before the rise of historical-critical approaches to Scripture, discussions specifically of Paul’s understanding of the law, or that of any other single author of Scripture; after all, where the primary author of Scripture throughout is taken to be the Holy Spirit, it follows that anything said within its compass forms part of a coherent whole. This remains Luther’s way of thinking as well: he believes that he is simply clarifying what Scripture says about the law. The terms in which he does so, however, are clearly defined by his reading of Paul. But if Luther reads (and defines!) the canon of Scripture in Pauline terms, we may say that John Calvin, by way of contrast, reads Paul from a canonical perspective. In the remainder of this paper, I hope to illustrate the latter point in relation to the law.20 As we have seen, Luther characteristically contrasts law and gospel, in a usage that (I have argued) is essentially faithful to Paul, though (among other things) it requires him to read what is said of “the law” in the Psalms as referring to God’s “word.” Calvin reverses the order. He finds ways (as we shall see) to deal with the Pauline passages, but allows the term “law” in the Psalms to stand, and (in a non-Pauline way) makes of “law” the all-encompassing term for God’s dealings with humankind. In this, (for Calvin) its proper sense, “law” is not contrasted with “gospel,” but embraces it: “David, in praising [the law], as he here does [Ps 19], speaks of the whole doctrine of the law, which includes also the gospel, and, therefore, under the law he comprehends Christ” (Com. Ps. 19:8; cf. Com. Isa., preface).21 used to illuminate other parts of Scripture, and other parts of Scripture can be drawn upon to illuminate Paul. 18  On “the word” in Luther, see Pelikan, Luther the Expositor, 48–70. 19  For this and other reasons, Luther did not believe the Epistle of James should be included among the “genuine sacred books”; he was not, however, inclined to impose this view on others (35.397). 20  References to Calvin’s commentaries on Old Testament books are taken from the nineteenth century translation of Calvin’s Commentaries; for those to commentaries on books from the New Testament, see Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries. 21  For “law” as the entire “doctrine” of Scripture (including, specifically, the gospel), see also Com. Isa. 2:3; Com. Jer. 31:34.



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The point, for Calvin, is that since the divine plan for humankind has remained constant throughout the ages, there can be no contrast between the Mosaic law (rightly understood) and the gospel, nor should one speak of different covenants: the “eternal and inviolable covenant” God made with Abraham governs God’s relations with his people in all ages.22 The salvation enjoyed by Christians today represents the fulfillment of the promise given to Abraham that blessing would come through his “seed” (Com. Exod. 19:1; Com. Jer. 31:31).23 For Calvin, it was no new covenant that was enacted at Mount Sinai, but a renewal of the covenant given to Abraham.24 In this, renewed form of the covenant, salvation in Christ found a place in the way various ceremonial laws foreshadowed his redemptive work.25 If Scripture nonetheless speaks of an “old” covenant and a “new,” it refers to differences in form,26 not substance, between God’s dealings with his church before and after the coming of Christ (Com. Jer. 31:31; cf. Inst. 2.10.1; 2.11.1). It should also, of course, be said, that the grace of the gospel was not fully revealed until the coming of Christ (Com. John 1:17): with the arrival of the reality to which Old Testament figures and types had pointed, God could now speak “openly” rather than “under a veil,” as he had done through Moses (Com. Jer. 31:31; cf. 31:33). But that which is fulfilled and openly spoken of in the New Testament remains in substance the same as that which was foreshadowed and obscurely presented in the Old; only the form has changed. The ancient ceremonies … were like the rough outlines which are the foreshadowings of the living picture. Before they put on the true colours with paint artists usually 22  The penchant of Calvin (and of a host of interpreters in his wake) to speak of, and give fundamental importance to, a single divine “covenant” again lacks a basis in Paul’s writings: there the term occurs but rarely, and when it does, a contrast between a “new” covenant and an “old” is generally implied if not explicit (cf. 1 Cor 11:25; 2 Cor 3:6, 14; Gal 4:24; and note the “covenants” [plural] of Rom 9:4; also Eph 2:12). Calvin’s general point can, of course, stand: God (as Paul, too, understood God) had a single plan for redemption in mind from all eternity. My observation here is simply that Calvin’s language marks a clear departure from Paul – though I would add that precision in Pauline interpretation even today is not helped by using Pauline terms in non-Pauline ways. Cf. Perspectives, 286–296. 23  Here, to be sure, Gal 3 and Rom 4 provide the basis for Calvin’s claim. 24  Note, again, by way of contrast, how Paul treats the law given to Moses as different in its very essence from the promise given to Abraham, though he finds a place for both in God’s purposes (Gal 3:17–21; Rom 4:13–16). 25  “The gospel did not so supplant the entire law as to bring forward a different way of salvation. Rather, it confirmed and satisfied whatever the law had promised, and gave substance to the shadows” (Inst. 2.9.4). 26  Though God desires only the spiritual worship spoken of in the New Testament, he accommodated himself to human weakness in enjoining the external rites of Israel’s worship as a kind of “preparatory training” for children (Com. Isa. 1:13; Com. John 4:23; Inst. 2.7.1).

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draw an outline in pencil of the representation which they intend. … The apostle has established this difference between the Law and the Gospel, that the former has foreshadowed in elementary and sketchy outline what today has been expressed in living and graphically printed colour. … It is to be noticed that the things which were shown to [the Old Testament fathers] from a distance are the same as those which are now set before our eyes. Both are shown the same Christ, the same justice, sanctification, and salvation. Only in the manner of the painting is there difference. (Com. Heb. 10:1)

But what has happened, we may well want to ask Calvin, to the law element of “law”? And does not Paul declare that the Mosaic law has been done away, and that believers have “died” to its statutes (Rom 7:4–6; Gal 2:19; 3:19–25)? Surely here there is a substantial difference between what we must nonetheless take to be an old covenant and a new? Calvin addresses the problems by suggesting that “law” is used in different ways, and by distinguishing between the use and the abuse of God’s eternal law. Calvin sees the Mosaic law as consisting essentially of two parts: “a promise of salvation and eternal life, and a rule for a godly and holy living” (Com. Hos., argument).27 The essence of the latter is found in the Decalogue: “Nothing can be wanted as the rule of a good and upright life beyond the Ten Commandments” (Mosaic Harmony, preface).28 In the ten commandments, the difference between good and evil is set forth. That difference remains, whether or not human beings respect it; the content of “a good and upright life” is not subject to change. In fact, of course, human beings do not obey God’s moral law, and the law condemns them: that is why Paul can speak of the “ministry” of the law tout court as one of condemnation and death (2 Cor 3:7, 9). This effect of the law, however, is “accidental” to its nature, determined rather by human response to its demands than by the nature of those demands themselves (Com. Acts 7:38). Like Luther, Calvin sees a divine purpose in the way the disobeyed law makes evident human corruption and liability to judgment, thus driving sinful human beings to seek grace in the Savior (Com. John 16:10; Inst. 2.5.6–8). But for Calvin, the same law that Paul calls a ministry of death is said by David (in Ps 19) to be “sweeter than honey and more to be desired than gold. … It cheers hearts, converts to the Lord and quickens.” Paul, he concludes, is speaking of the law’s effect upon sinners; David, of how the same law affects those born again by God’s Spirit (Com. 1 John 5:3). Thus, taking (we may say) his cue from David, Calvin sees the moral law of the ten commandments as still applying to believers: in the “perfection to which it exhorts us, the law 27  Calvin goes on to add that the law has a third part, allowing a separate category for the “threatenings and reproofs” that are designed to restore transgressors to the fear of God (Com. Hos., argument; cf. Com. Isa., preface). 28  Mosaic Harmony refers to Calvin’s commentary on Exodus through Deuteronomy (Commentary on the Last Four Books of Moses, Arranged in the Form of a Harmony).



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points out the goal toward which throughout life we are to strive” (Inst. 2. 7. 13). It is only from the law’s condemnation and curse that believers are delivered. And even these aspects of the law are not simply done away; rather, believers are freed from their effects because Christ has borne them (Inst. 2. 7. 15). Nor will Calvin allow that the ceremonial parts of the law have been done away. They were commanded, and meant to be observed, not for their own sake – on their own, they are “vain and trifling” – but for the sake of the Christ to whom they pointed (Mosaic Harmony, preface). And, to be sure, they need no longer be observed now that their educational and foreshadowing work has been accomplished. But it is only the observance that has ended; what the ceremonial commandments of the law signified remains and is of lasting importance. “So Christ’s coming did not take anything away, even from the ceremonies. … One does not do away with ceremonies, when their reality is kept, and their shadow omitted” (Com. Matt. 5:17–18; cf. Inst. 2. 7. 16).29 In this way, the law – including both its moral and its ceremonial provisions – is seen to be eternal; the gospel is seen to be contained in the law; and Christ is seen as the law’s “goal” or fulfillment (cf. Rom 10:4). But does not Paul often distinguish the law, its commands and condemnation, from Christ, the gospel, and the grace of salvation? Calvin (of course) grants the point, since, for Calvin, too, what Paul says on the subject must find a place in a proper understanding of the law even if (as I am arguing) it is not allowed to shape that understanding. Calvin insists that in these Pauline texts, “law” is being used to mean something less than “law,” properly speaking.30 When contrasted with the gospel, what the law shares with the gospel – the work and grace of Christ, foreshadowed in its ceremonies – is left out of the picture, so that only what is distinctive of the law remains: its demands, and the threats of judgment for transgressors (Com. Rom. 10:5; Com. 2 Cor. 3:7).31 Paul, Calvin suggests, found it 29 Thus, when Scripture says that statutes concerning the tabernacle’s candlestick and lamps are to be observed “forever,” the point is that they were to be observed until the day when the reality was revealed of which they were a type (Com. Exod. 27:20–21). 30 C. E. B. Cranfield, in the spirit of Calvin but with his own distinctive twist, claimed that Paul used νόμος to mean “legalism” (he cannot have meant the Mosaic law as such) when he contrasted it with the gospel. For references and discussion, see Perspectives, 201–208, 330–335. 31  “Without Christ there is in the law nothing but inexorable rigour, which adjudges all mankind to the wrath and curse of God. And farther, without Christ, there remains within us a rebelliousness of the flesh, which kindles in our hearts a hatred of God and of his law, and from this proceed the distressing bondage and awful terror of which the Apostle speaks. … The design of Paul is to show what the law can do for us, taken by itself; that is to say, what it can do for us when, without the promise of grace, it strictly and rigorously exacts from us the duty which we owe to God” (Com. Ps. 19:8).

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important to speak in this way in responding to people who misused the law, wishing to make observance of its ceremonial demands binding even on believers (Mosaic Harmony, “Use of the Law”). But the “bare” law of which he speaks in these contexts is not the law in its fullness; it is the law apart from Christ (Com. Gal. 4:24) – and apart from Christ, the law is like a dead body without a soul (Com. John 9:28). “If you separate the Law from Christ nothing remains in it save empty shapes” (Com. John 1:17; cf. Com. 2 Cor. 3:17). “Without Christ the whole ministry of Moses vanishes” (Com. John 5:46). This is surely an impressive attempt at formulating a biblical theology of law; by no means do I intend to disparage its merits when I point out that, though what Paul says about the law finds a place in Calvin’s scheme, the scheme itself is not readily derived from Paul’s writings. Here “law” is made the all-encompassing designation for God’s eternal plan, not the temporary institution of which Paul speaks (added 430 years after the divine promise to Abraham and in force only until the latter found its fulfillment in the coming of the promised “seed” [Gal 3:17–19; cf. 3:23–25; 4:1–5; also 2 Cor 3:11, 14]). Paul nowhere speaks of the demands of the law as though, taken by themselves, they represent the law deprived of its essence (the “bare” law):32 on the contrary, the essence of the law for Paul lies precisely in its commandments and the attendant promise of life for those who obey them (Rom 10:5; Gal 3:12, citing Lev 18:5). Because the essence of the law lies in commandments that require doing but are not done, Paul concludes that “righteousness” cannot come through the law but must come through faith (Rom 3:19–22; Gal 2:16; 3:10–13, 19–22). By Calvin’s scheme, righteousness, in effect, does come through the law, once it is rightly understood.33

32  To be sure, a Pauline basis for speaking of the law apart from Christ as deprived of its essence (and thus a “bare” law) can be found if one interprets the ambiguous Rom 10:4 to say that Christ is the “goal” rather than the “end” of the law. Even here, however, “end” appears the more natural reading (cf. Perspectives, 300, 329–330, 399); and texts like Rom 10:5 and Gal 3:12 speak straightforwardly enough of what Paul sees as the essence of the law. Romans 8:3–4 portrays the work of God’s Son, not as the essence of the law when it is rightly understood, but as the remedy for the law’s essential weakness (cf. also Gal 3:2–5). In 1 Cor 15:56, Paul introduces (quite gratuitously in this context) what he takes to be axiomatic about the law (“the power of sin is the law”); the term is here hardly an equivalent for the whole counsel of God. It is, moreover, characteristic of Paul (as we have seen) to contrast faith with the law. 33  Very much in the spirit of Calvin, though so curious an exegetical maneuver that not even he entertained it, is the interpretation (advanced initially by Gerhard Friedrich and Eduard Lohse) of “law of faith” in Rom 3:27 as referring to the Mosaic law and indicating that, properly understood, that law calls for faith, not works (refuted, to my mind, decisively by Räisänen; for references, see Perspectives, 322–325).



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Conclusions Consideration of Paul’s understanding of the law is characteristic of historical-critical scholarship. In earlier periods, it was assumed that what Paul says on the subject forms but a part of the Holy Spirit’s teaching; for the (coherent) whole, one must read Pauline texts together with other relevant texts in Scripture. Both Luther and Calvin did so. But Luther read “other relevant texts in Scripture” in the light of his understanding of Paul (an understanding that, to my mind, is essentially faithful to the apostle); Calvin found a place for Pauline texts in his understanding of law, but read them in the light of his understanding of “other relevant texts in Scripture.” Tell it not in Gath, but it seems to me that this brief study highlights a weakness in premodern readings of the Bible to which historical-critical scholarship provides a needed corrective. Let it be said at once that it works both ways. I am myself among those convinced that modern students of the Bible have much to learn from premodern interpretations: for one thing (though much else could be said), inasmuch as our forebears wrestled to find coherence in the biblical text, they offer their own corrective to the contemporary penchant to settle too readily (if not complacently) in a judgment of diversity or contradiction not only between the writings of different biblical authors, but even within different verses in the same text. The point here, however, is that the delight of some modern scholars in facile findings of diversity represents but one extreme of the pendulum. At the other extreme, ironically enough, we find that the very reverence for Scripture shown by our forebears, combined with a conviction of its coherence, led not infrequently to facile harmonizations and dubious attempts at systematization that no less obviously distort the texts. It is, to be sure, natural to human beings – in the language of another day, it would even be called their “glory” – to want to bring order to the world of their experience; to reduce the incomprehensible to comprehension; to find, within their paradigms of thought, a place for phenomena that appear contradictory. And biblical scholarship is eminently a human undertaking. When modern scholars find diversity within the writings of Scripture, they are in fact fitting texts within preferred contemporary paradigms of thought no less than the premoderns did when they found coherence; the latter observation, however, is the issue for the moment. I have already pointed out how Calvin, in search of a way of speaking about law that can apply to all the biblical texts, failed to do justice to the radical nature of much that Paul says on the subject. Luther, for his part, captured important Pauline emphases in his distinction between law and gospel; and it should be remembered (it is often forgotten) that Luther saw a continuing place for “law” even in the life of the believer. Nonetheless, it seems clear (to me,

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at least) that when the term “law” – in Luther’s sense, and as opposed to “gospel” – is applied to the ethical teaching of Jesus and the exhortations in the epistles, the force of these texts has been blunted. Can a firm distinction between “law” and “gospel” really serve as the key to understanding the Gospel of Matthew? Or the book of Deuteronomy? Or the Psalms? What, then, is the student of Scripture to do in cases such as this, where interpreters even of the stature of Luther and Calvin seem incapable of convincingly reconciling different biblical texts? 1. Many will be content to see disunity in such cases. Indeed, as suggested, above, the fashion of our day is to celebrate the Bible’s diversity, particularly inasmuch as it appears sufficient to refute earlier understandings of Scripture and approaches to its interpretation. 2. Those disinclined to follow the fashion of the day, or whose conviction that Scripture is the word of God carries with it the corollary that, appearances notwithstanding, its writings are coherent, will continue the search for unity. It is not difficult, for example, to show that much that distinguishes Luther’s view of the law in Scripture from Calvin’s pertains rather to terminology than to substance.34 In principle, there can be nothing inappropriate in searching for coherence in Scripture even in cases where earlier attempts have proven inadequate. After all, cheap claims of disunity discredit biblical scholarship no less than cheap harmonizations. 3. Where the search for coherence brings no convincing results, the believer need feel no shame in admitting as much: to acknowledge one’s limitations is not to compromise the faith! Our interpretations may be faulty. Or perhaps the error lies in our (human) assumptions about what kind of unity the word of God ought to display: believers’ expectations of what God’s word ought to look like have certainly proven unfounded in the past.35 In any case, given that believers readily acknowledge that the Creator’s ways and thoughts are far beyond their own, they need not hesitate to concede that parts of God’s word defy their comprehension. 34  Though (as we have seen) Luther and Calvin differ widely in their understanding of the term “law” (there is, indeed, a measure of overlap between what Calvin means by “law” and what Luther means by God’s “word”), they agree (i) that the laws of Moses serve to show the inherent sinfulness of humankind and the need of the sinner for the grace of the gospel; (ii) that the Decalogue sums up the will of God for all human beings; (iii) that the ceremonial laws of Moses foreshadowed the work of Christ and are no longer to be observed by his followers. 35  Much grief would have been spared had, e. g., Galileo’s opponents recognized that possibility at the outset. Galileo appropriately cited Augustine in noting that discredit is brought upon Scripture and the Christian faith when zealots, claiming the Bible in support, argue for positions others know to be false (“Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina,” 206–209).



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4. Prepared though believers ought to be to acknowledge that “the secret things belong to the LORD our God,” they will also want to search out fully all that has been “revealed” (Deut 29:29). In my view (as argued above), Luther failed in his attempt to identify the single hermeneutical key to all of Scripture, and Calvin failed in his attempt to organize all that Scripture says about “law” into a single comprehensive scheme. I do not, however, think their attempts misguided. Given that the ultimate authority on which formulations of Christian doctrine must be based is the Bible, and given that the preservation and transmission of Christian faith requires such formulations, it is essential that those so gifted within communities of faith wrestle with the biblical texts in attempting to arrive at coherent understandings of the truth they convey. The reminder remains nonetheless in order: however divine the subject matter, systematic theology, like biblical scholarship, is eminently a human undertaking. That it be undertaken is essential to the health of Christian communities. That its proposals be carefully measured against the biblical texts is equally essential. That its most persuasive results amount to no more than “raid[s] on the inarticulate with shabby equipment” is inevitable. Bibliography Calvin, John. Calvin’s Commentaries. Vols. 1–45. Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1844–1856. Reprinted: Vols. 1–23. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009. – Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries. Vols. 1–12. Edited by David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959–1972. – Institutes of the Christian Religion. Vols. 1–2. Edited by John T. McNeill; translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960. Galilei, Galileo. “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina [1615].” In Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, translated by Stillman Drake. Garden City: Doubleday, 1957, 175–216. Luther, Martin. The Large Catechism of Martin Luther. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959. – Luther’s Works. Vols. 1–55. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann. St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–1986. Pelikan, Jaroslav. Luther the Expositor: Introduction to the Reformer’s Exegetical Writings. St. Louis: Concordia, 1959. Richardson, Peter, Stephen Westerholm, Albert I. Baumgarten, and Cecilia Wassén. Law in Religious Communities in the Romans Period: The Debate over Torah and Nomos in Post-Biblical Judaism and Early Christianity. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991. Strömberg Krantz, Eva. Des Schiffes Weg mitten im Meer: Beiträge zur Erforschung der nautischen Terminologie des Alten Testament. Lund: Gleerup, 1982. Westerholm, Stephen. “Is Nothing Sacred? Holiness in the Writings of Paul.” In Purity, Holiness, and Identity in Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Memory of Susan Haber, edited by Carl S. Ehrlich, Anders Runesson, and Eileen M. Schuller. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013, 87–99.

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– Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988. – Jesus and Scribal Authority. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1978. – “The Judaism Paul Left Behind Him.” In The Making of Christianity: Conflicts, Contacts, and Constructions: Essays in Honor of Bengt Holmberg, edited by Magnus Zetterholm and Samuel Byrskog. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012, 353–370. – Justification Reconsidered: Rethinking a Pauline Theme. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013. – “The Law and the ‘Just Man’ (1 Tim 1,3–11).” Studia Theologica 36 (1982): 79–95. – “Letter and Spirit: The Foundation of Pauline Ethics.” New Testament Studies 30 (1984): 229–248. – “On Fulfilling the Whole Law (Gal 5.14).” Svensk exegetisk årsbok 51–52 (1986– 1987): 229–237. – “Paul and the Law in Romans 9–11.” In Paul and the Mosaic Law, edited by James D. G. Dunn. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996, 215–237. – Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. – “The Righteousness of the Law and the Righteousness of Faith in Romans.” Interpretation 58 (2004): 253–264. – “St. Paul and Knowledge of the Natural Law.” Journal of Law, Philosophy and Culture 3 (2009): 433–444. – “Torah, Nomos, and Law: A Question of Meaning.” Studies in Religion 15 (1986): 327–336.

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature Old Testament Genesis 1:3 280 1:27 33 2:24 33, 114 3 66 4:7 356 6–8 356 6:9 342, 343 7:1 343 9:25 67 15:6 123, 221, 338, 339, 341 18–19 356 18:23–32 253 18:24 344 18:25 342 20:9 356 20:11 356 26:5 46 37:4 273 37:18 273 42:21 273 44:16 273 45:5 273 45:7–8 273 50:20 273 Exodus 12:43 46 12:49 46 16:28 46 16:29 1, 32 18:16 46 19:3–8 374 19:6 390 20 28, 356 20:7 156 20:8–11 158 20:10 32 20:12 114 20:13–15 365

23:7 253, 345 23:13 156 24:3–8 374 24:7–8 28 31:14–15 32 35:2 32 35:3 32 Leviticus 10:10 393 11–15 157 11 330 11:44 391 18:5 55, 121, 122, 130, 221, 228, 258, 281, 374, 380, 382, 387, 400, 408 18:22 361 19:2 390, 391 19:12 156 19:16 127 19:18 118, 126, 127, 380 19:35–36 344 20:13 361 26 213 26:41 322 26:46 46 Numbers 4:3 151 4:23 151 4:30 151 8:23–25 151 15:16 46 15:18–21 392 15:27–31 260 15:29 46 15:30–31 18, 347 19 157 35:4 32 35:5 32

414

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

Deuteronomy 4:6–8 257, 305, 344 4:6 26, 357 4:8 24, 47 4:29–31 29 6:5 29, 137 6:13 156 6:24–25 260 6:25 12, 357, 374 7:1–4 151 7:6 253 9:4–29 30 9:4–7 268, 343 9:4–6 253 10:12–13 30 10:16 322 10:20 156 11:26–28 18, 30, 260 14:3–21 330 16:19 253 17:9 150 24 156 24:1–4 155–156 24:1 1, 33, 116 25:1 253, 345 25:4 292 27–29 228 27–28 203 27:26 139 28–31 213 28:1–14 18, 26 29:14–15 165 29:15 169 29:20(21) 47 29:29 411 30:1–10 29 30:6 322 30:10 47 30:11–20 30, 213 30:14 280, 281 30:15–20 130, 260, 374 30:16–20 18 30:19 67 31:16–32:38 30 32:46 47 Joshua 1:7 47 1:8 35 8:34 37 1 Kings (3 Kingdoms) 2:3 47

8:32 253 21:1–19 345 2 Kings 17:13 47 23:1–25 23 1 Chronicles 23:3 151 23:24 151 23:27 151 2 Chronicles 31:17 151 Ezra 3:2–5 23 3:2 146 3:4 146 3:8 151 6:18 23, 146 7:6 48 7:10 48 7:11–26 145 7:12–26 48 7:12 25, 48 7:14 25, 48 7:21 25, 48 7:25–26 23 7:26 25, 48, 146 9:1–2 151 9:6–15 30 Nehemiah 8:14–18 23 8:14–15 146 8:14 48 9:13–14 48 9:16–37 30 9:34 48 10:28–39 23 10:29 146 10:33(32) 151 10:35(34) 151 12:44 23 13:1–3 23, 146 13:15–22 23 13:23–27 151 Job 4:17–19 69, 344 4:17 51 12:4 342



Old Testament

15:14–16 69, 344 22:19 342 25:4–6 69, 344 31:1–40 267, 357 Psalms 1 305 1:2 35 1:6 342 7:2–18(1–17) 267 18:21–25(20–24) 305 19 35, 404, 406 19:7–11 35 19:7 404 19:10 35 23:3 344 26:1–12 267 32:1–2 123, 221 32:11 342 44:18–25(17–24) 267 51:13(11) 393 64:11(10) 342 79:8–9 267 94:21 342 96:13 254 97:11 342 98:9 254 105:45 46 106:6–47 267 110 125 119:1 305 119:2 35 119:4 35 119:5 35 119:7 35, 305 119:8 35 119:10 35 119:11 35 119:12 35 119:15 35 119:16 35 119:20 35 119:31 35 119:43 35 119:47 35 130:3–4 344 143:2 69, 122, 258, 344, 388 145:13 131 147:19–20 305 Proverbs 1:7 343 3:1–10 26

3:7 343 3:19 253, 343 8 26 8:12–36 343 10:3 343 10:24 343 10:27 343 11:8 343 11:31 343 12:1 344 12:10 343 12:15 343 12:21 343 13:5 343 13:18 344 13:25 343 15:5 344 15:17 345 16:2 343 17:15 253 17:26 253 19:22 343 21:2 343 21:26 343 28:6 343 29:7 343 30:12 343 Isaiah 2:11 284 2:17 284 2:22 284 5:23 253, 345 13–23 357 24:5 46 28:11–12 120 29:14–16 284 30:10 34 31:3 284 35:5–6 133 40 175 41:9 172 42:6 172 43:22–44:5 268 45:4 366 45:5 366 54:13 333 55:11 174 58:13 32 61:1 133 63:10 393 66:24 190

415

416

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

36:16–32 268 36:26–27 329 36:27 393 44:7 322 44:9 322

Jeremiah 4:4 322 9:22–23(23–24) 268 9:25(26) 322 13:23 268 14:7–9 267 14:19–22 267 17:9 268 17:22 32 31:31–34 305, 329 31:33–34 333 32:1–44 265 32:23 46 46–51 357

Daniel 4:34–35 131 6:9(8) 25, 48 6:13(12) 25, 48 6:16(15) 25, 48 9:4–19 267 9:11 48 Hosea 6:6

Ezekiel 11:17–21 275 11:21 275 16:53–63 268 18:5–9 342–343, 374 18:5 252 18:6–9 252 20:5–44 268 20:33–44 275 20:38 275 22:26 393 25–32 357 33:13 252 33:18 252

114, 116, 133

Joel 3:1–2 (2:28–29) 393 Amos 1:3–2:3 356 Micah 6:6–8 114 7:18–20 267 Habakkuk 2:4

121, 123, 204

New Testament Matthew 1:17 133 1:21 138 1:22–23 133 2:11 171 2:15 133 2:17–18 133 2:23 133 3:1–12 173 4:17 3, 7, 113, 129, 131 4:18–22 115, 143 4:21 171 4:23–24 137 4:23 129 5–7 4 5 159 5:3–7:27 166 5:3 3 5:6 252

5:8 157, 160, 301 5:10–12 5 5:13–16 5 5:15 188 5:17–20 115, 306 5:17 4, 113, 115, 117, 133, 136, 293 5:18–19 116 5:18 136, 141 5:20 3, 4, 337 5:21–48 117, 158 5:21–22 4, 117, 158 5:27–28 4, 117, 158 5:28 160 5:31–32 5, 117 5:32 116 5:33–42 5 5:33–37 5, 117, 156 5:37 156



5:38–42 5, 117 5:39–40 5 5:43–48 117 5:43–45 4 5:45–48 7 5:45–47 5 5:45 161 6:1–18 5, 7 6:3 7 6:6 6 6:21 160 6:24 187 6:32 5, 7 7:5 7 7:6 7 7:11 137 7:12 117, 133 7:13–14 337, 338 7:21–27 5 7:21 3, 337 7:24–27 115, 117, 143 8:16 137 8:19–22 115 8:20 171 8:23–27 172 9 165 9:2 137 9:5–6 165 9:9 115, 143, 170 9:10–13 137, 138 9:10 132 9:13 6, 116, 133 9:14–15 164 9:17 132 9:35 129 10:5–6 169 10:7 3, 113, 129 10:22 115 10:24–25 168, 171, 187 10:25 187 10:26 168, 189 10:32–33 143 10:34–35 337 10:36 341 10:37–39 115, 143, 338 10:37 137 10:38 137 10:39 137 10:40 115, 137 11:2–6 337 11:2–5 115 11:4–5 133 11:11–13 4

New Testament

11:12–13 115, 131 11:12 168, 190 11:19 132 11:29 115 12:1–14 115, 136 12:1–8 132 12:1 116 12:3 116 12:4 116 12:5–6 158 12:5 116 12:6 4, 116 12:7 6, 116, 133 12:8 115 12:9–13 132 12:11–12 116, 118, 158 12:12 115 12:15 137 12:28 3, 131, 337 12:30 337 12:33 7 12:34–35 160 12:34 187 12:35 161 12:41–42 4, 131 13:1–52 3 13:3 115 13:9 115 13:12 168, 189 13:16–17 115, 131, 133 13:17 4 13:34 2 13:44 130 13:45–46 130 15:1–20 117, 136 15:1–9 116 15:1–2 33, 132 15:2 373 15:3–9 34 15:6 156 15:11 116 15:14 168, 189 15:16 164 15:17–20 116 15:17 116 15:18–19 137 15:20 116 15:25 164 16:9 164 16:16 170 16:18 180 16:22–23 170 16:24–25 115, 338

417

418

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

16:24 115, 137, 171 16:25 137 17:5 177 17:24–27 154 18:3 3 18:18 180 18:23–35 3 18:35 160 19:3–9 5, 116, 118 19:8 116 19:9 116 19:16–26 338 19:16 130 19:17–19 132 19:20 134 19:21 115, 134 19:22 134 19:23–26 134 19:23–24 3 19:24 131 19:27–29 115 19:27 170 20:1–16 3 20:26 187 20:28 138, 171 21:31–32 6 21:31 131, 136 21:43 131 22:1–10 137 22:34–40 117, 295 22:37–40 133, 301 22:38 137 22:40 117 23:2–3 154, 155 23:16–22 154 23:23–26 136 23:23–24 6, 116, 133 23:23 6, 117, 153 23:25–28 153 23:25–26 118, 157, 190 23:26 116 24:15 164 24:35 115 24:45–51 164 25:29 168, 189 25:31–46 160 26:6–13 173 26:28 138 28:9 171 28:17 171 28:18–20 169, 176 28:19 164 28:20 115, 117, 176

Mark 1:1 114, 173, 175 1:2–8 173 1:11 114 1:14–15 3, 113, 114, 173, 337 1:14 166 1:15 4, 114, 129, 167 1:16–20 163, 337 1:17–18 114 1:20 114, 171 1:24 171 1:41 157 2 165 2:1–12 179 2:2 174 2:3–12 114 2:9–11 165 2:9 165 2:10 114, 158 2:14–17 153 2:14 114, 170 2:17 3 2:18–22 114 2:18–20 164 2:23–3:6 117 2:23–3:5 115 2:23–28 6, 180 2:23–27 114 2:25–26 158 2:27 3, 158 2:28 114, 158, 165 3:1–6 6 3:1–5 114 3:4 6, 158 3:24–25 186 4 188 4:3 114 4:9 114 4:14–20 174, 175 4:21 187 4:22 168, 188, 189 4:23–25 114 4:25 168, 189 4:30–32 3 4:31 ff. 167 4:33–34 3 4:33 174 4:41 171 5:25–34 157 5:38–43 157 6:49–50 171 7 151, 157 7:1–23 6, 117, 160



7:2 157 7:3–4 115, 166 7:5 373 7:6–13 34, 114 7:6–7 301 7:6 153 7:7–13 115 7:8 155 7:9–10 114 7:13 114, 154, 155, 175 7:14–19 114, 115 7:15 3, 123, 157, 186, 301 7:18–23 157 7:18 164 7:19 116, 136, 157, 164 7:21–23 160 7:27 164 8:11–13 6 8:29 114, 170 8:32–33 170 8:34–38 161 8:34 114, 171 8:35 3, 114 9 189 9:6 171 9:7 114 9:33 ff. 167 9:37 114, 189 9:38–41 189 9:39 189 9:42 114, 189 9:43–48 337 9:43–47 189 9:49 168, 190, 191 9:50 190 10:2–12 154, 156 10:2–9 33, 114, 118 10:3 116 10:4–5 115 10:5 116 10:9 3, 6 10:11 114, 186 10:17–22 6, 114, 115 10:15 160, 337 10:21 134 10:23–27 337 10:25 3 10:28–30 114 10:28 170 10:45 171 11:27–33 6 12:17 3, 154 12:28–34 114, 116, 160

New Testament

12:28–31 295 13:9 114 13:10 164, 166, 174 13:12–13 114 13:14 164 13:31 114 13:33–37 164 13:37 165 14:3–9 173 14:9 164, 166, 174 15:21 166 Luke 1:1–4 166 1:5–6 1 1:6 118 1:59 118 2:19 168 2:21–24 118 2:27 118 2:39 118 2:41 118 2:50–51 168 4:21 4 4:43 129 6:1–11 117 6:5 117 6:20–49 117 6:39 168, 189 6:40 168, 187 7:22 129 7:36–50 6 8 188 8:1 129 8:16–17 188 8:17 168, 189 8:18 189 8:19 168 10:7–8 118 10:8 157 10:9–11 113 10:9 3, 129 10:11 3, 129 10:25–37 160 10:25–28 118 10:29–37 118 11:29–32 188 11:33 188 11:34–36 167 11:37–41 157 11:39–41 190 11:39 117 11:40–41 118

419

420

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

11:42 6, 118 12:2 168 12:22–53 117 13:10–17 118 13:23–24 338 14:1–6 118 14:5 158 16:16 4, 118 16:17 118, 136 16:18 118 16:27–31 119 18 118 18:9–14 6, 118, 136, 153 18:9 153 18:18–20 119 18:22 134 19:1–10 6 19:26 168, 189 23:56 118 24:27 113, 118 24:44 113, 118 John 1:17 119, 306 1:45 120 2:6 119 2:8–11 119 2:19–22 119 4:19–24 119 5:8–11 119 5:10 32 5:16 119 5:17 120 5:18 120 5:19 120 5:39–47 120 5:39 120 5:45 119 5:46–47 120 6:31–58 119 6:45 306, 333 7:17 120 7:19 119, 120, 306 7:22–23 120 7:24 120 7:25 120 7:49 119 8:17 119, 306 9:14 119 9:16 4, 119 9:28–29 119 10:33 120 10:34–38 120

10:34 113, 119, 306 12:34 113 13:13–16 168, 187 13:34 119, 306 14:15 119 14:21 119 15:10 119 15:12 119 15:15 161 15:20 168, 187 15:25 113, 119, 306 16:2 372 18:28 120 19:7 120 20:30–31 166 Acts 1:12 32 2:38 119, 167 3:22–23 118 4:4 174 4:12 119 5:17 150 5:31 119 7:37 118 7:38 121, 125 7:53 121, 125 8:1 385 8:4 174 9:1 385 10:9–16 119 10:28–29 119 10:43 119 10:44–11:18 119 11:1 174 13:38–41 167 13:39 119 14:15–17 355 15:11 119 15:10 119 15:19–21 119 15:28–29 119 16:3 119 16:31 119 17:22–31 355 18:18 119 20:16 119 21:20 119 21:23–24 119 21:25 119 21:26 119 22:12 119 24:17–18 119



New Testament

25:8 119 26:5 31, 149 26:22–23 118 28:23 118 28:17 119 Romans 1–8 269 1–3 57, 58, 62, 347, 367 1 56, 58, 62, 361, 362, 364, 365, 366, 398 1:1 58, 267, 388, 392 1:2–3 386 1:2 385, 386 1:3 9 1:4 9 1:5–6 399 1:5 340, 367 1:6–8 273 1:6 11 1:7 10, 15, 171, 391 1:9 359 1:11–12 334 1:16–17 59, 219, 261, 266, 267, 360 1:16 59, 108, 175, 261, 359, 402 1:17 223, 267, 302, 348 1:18–4:25 219 1:18–3:20 12, 59, 217, 219, 227, 261, 360, 388 1:18–2:29 12 1:18–32 57, 199, 223, 254, 267, 320 1:18–23 107, 108 1:18 58, 219, 254, 255, 345, 360, 361, 364, 377, 381, 382 1:19–21 228, 254, 267 1:19–20 361 1:20 62, 122, 269 1:21–32 228 1:21–24 58 1:21–23 361 1:21 62, 107, 361, 363, 377, 398 1:23 363 1:24–32 361 1:24 377 1:25 254 1:26–27 27, 254, 361, 398 1:26 357, 377 1:28–32 254

421

1:28 108, 267, 357, 367, 377 1:29–31 362 1:29 362 1:32 55, 62, 107, 109, 122, 255, 256, 362 2–3 282, 370 2 12, 55, 58, 200, 211, 215, 220, 223, 224, 227, 251, 255, 257, 258, 259, 320, 321, 323, 326, 327, 361, 363, 364, 365, 366 2:1–29 228 2:1–16 219 2:1–11 320 2:1–3 321 2:1–2 320 2:1 269 2:5–11 255 2:5 360 2:6–27 247 2:6–13 18, 122, 245 2:6–12 399 2:6–11 54, 107, 224, 256, 378, 381 2:6–10 109 2:6 122 2:7–10 12, 346 2:7 55, 256, 398 2:8–9 255 2:8 321 2:9–11 13, 363 2:10 55, 248, 256, 398 2:11 122, 346 2:12–16 240 2:12 49, 107, 255, 321, 378, 381 2:13–15 398 2:13–14 293 2:13 12, 55, 56, 122, 220, 245, 248, 251, 256, 258, 282, 321, 346, 364, 374, 388, 398, 402 2:14–15 13, 55, 107, 109, 122, 220, 240, 256, 364, 367 2:14 55, 56, 239, 256, 308, 321, 322, 364 2:15 56, 256, 364 2:16 364 2:17–29 13, 107, 198 2:17–27 398 2:17–24 56, 220, 227, 400 2:17–23 55 2:17–22 321, 346, 387

422

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

2:17–21 139 2:17–20 122, 248, 320, 378, 381 2:17–18 49, 267 2:17 199, 320, 361 2:18–20 363 2:18 331, 332, 375 2:20 322 2:21–27 122 2:21–24 321 2:21–22 256, 258, 321, 363 2:23–24 267 2:23 226, 321 2:25–29 56, 57, 257 2:25–27 258 2:25–26 332 2:25 57, 257, 321, 323 2:26–27 239, 240, 257 2:26 55, 57, 257, 321, 322 2:27–29 320–324 2:27 57, 257, 315, 317, 321, 323, 327 2:28–29 124, 322, 323 2:29 315, 317, 322, 323, 329 3–5 348 3 56, 58, 220 3:1–8 12 3:1–2 13, 56, 323 3:1 276 3:2 267, 385 3:3–4 270 3:3 270 3:4 220 3:8 17 3:9–20 57, 228, 258, 364, 381, 399 3:9–10 12 3:9 12, 58, 220, 254, 276, 320, 377, 378 3:10–18 224, 254, 259, 388 3:10–12 220 3:10 53, 57, 71, 81, 122, 345, 346, 364 3:12 229, 345 3:13–18 220 3:19–24 268 3:19–22 408 3:19–20 12, 13, 59, 220, 249, 267, 283, 402 3:19 113, 122, 199, 220, 249, 269, 320, 364, 399 3:20–28 399 3:20–22 282

3:20

13, 79, 122, 198, 224, 227, 258, 259, 261, 282, 284, 310, 346, 377, 380, 382, 388, 398 3:21–4:25 219, 220 3:21–30 217, 280 3:21–26 224, 267, 284, 360, 381, 402 3:21–22 220, 249, 261, 281, 282, 283, 375, 381, 386, 388, 402 3:21 13, 49, 113, 123, 282, 323, 382, 385 3:22–24 402 3:22–23 13, 82, 107, 267, 378 3:23–24 59, 249, 262, 279 3:23 57, 59, 122, 260, 261, 267, 364 3:24–26 123, 260, 348, 350, 381 3:24–25 267 3:24 59, 261, 280 3:25 19, 220, 262, 347, 389 3:27–4:2 227 3:27–28 269 3:27 123, 226, 239, 262, 408 3:28–30 13, 390 3:28 123, 281, 398 3:29–30 82 3:29 340 3:30 267 3:31 282 4 215, 222, 224, 226, 262, 279, 280, 338, 339, 361, 405 4:1–25 400 4:1–8 262, 382 4:1–5 207 4:1 8, 276 4:2–4 123 4:2 262, 269 4:3–8 221 4:3–5 379 4:3 339 4:4–6 248 4:4–5 262, 402 4:4 279 4:5–8 268 4:5 12, 59, 123, 248, 249, 257, 260, 261, 262, 267, 279, 284, 339, 348, 402 4:6–8 123 4:6 59, 262 4:7 224



New Testament

4:9–12 262, 340 4:9 262 4:11–12 339 4:11 322, 339 4:12 271 4:13–16 18, 58, 402, 405 4:13–15 16, 398 4:13 281, 339 4:14 281 4:15 12, 199, 240, 259, 282, 324, 365, 380, 400 4:16 280, 281 4:17–25 263 4:17 218, 277 4:18–22 279 4:18 339 4:19 339 4:23–24 339, 385 5–7 58, 60, 62, 310, 333 5 54, 62, 338, 339, 351 5:1–11 249 5:1–2 280, 349 5:1 251, 338, 342, 349, 399 5:2 375 5:5–11 267 5:6–11 284 5:6–10 346 5:6–9 402 5:6–8 260, 267, 268 5:6 59, 248, 261, 379 5:7–8 254 5:7 303 5:8–11 393 5:8 58, 59, 248, 261, 348 5:9 59, 261, 262, 348 5:10 59, 261, 346, 378 5:11 350 5:12–8:8 57, 388 5:12–6:11 267 5:12–21 274, 378 5:12–19 267, 349 5:12–14 17, 324 5:12 60, 62, 218, 222, 349 5:13–14 49, 349 5:13 8, 17, 55, 122, 240, 257, 259, 311, 324, 365, 398 5:15–19 262, 350 5:15–17 279 5:16–17 123, 402 5:16 350, 381 5:17 59, 261, 262, 280, 350, 375 5:18–19 381

5:18 5:19

423

349, 350, 381 57, 58, 59, 62, 81, 261, 302, 339, 342, 349, 350 5:20–21 60 5:20 8, 17, 122, 240, 267, 282, 311, 324, 377, 379, 380, 398 5:21 60 6:1–7:5 325 6 60, 80, 200, 254, 262, 263, 309, 324, 351 6:1–23 17, 378, 391 6:1–11 17, 57, 284, 333, 378 6:1 276, 377 6:3 11 6:6 381 6:10–11 381 6:12–23 310 6:12–19 144 6:12–13 267 6:13 324 6:14–15 123, 208, 375, 389, 399 6:14 13, 302, 324, 330, 377 6:15 291, 331 6:16–23 57, 60, 377 6:16–17 325 6:16 351 6:18 123, 254, 345 6:19 254, 324, 345 6:20 325 6:21 324 6:22 331 6:23 351 7 242, 282, 297, 309, 315, 317, 319, 324, 328, 388, 403 7:1–6 302, 310, 326, 399 7:1 12, 326 7:2–3 326 7:2–4 13 7:4–6 239, 406 7:4 310, 326, 333, 389 7:5–25 267 7:5 8, 17, 122, 240, 267, 295, 324, 325, 333, 377, 380 7:6 13, 17, 121, 123, 282, 295, 315, 316, 317, 323, 324–328, 329, 333, 375, 377, 388, 389, 391, 393 7:7–25 17, 259, 380, 381 7:7–13 122, 240, 311, 319, 325, 347, 398 7:7–12 203

424

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

7:7–11 8, 121, 240, 325 7:7–9 245 7:7–8 380 7:7 13, 239, 259, 325, 380, 402 7:8–11 377 7:8 325 7:10 58, 240, 245, 247, 249, 282, 325, 377, 387 7:12 49, 139, 257, 259, 281, 301, 333, 377, 381, 387 7:13–14 240, 381 7:13 8, 122, 377, 402 7:14–8:8 267 7:14–25 267, 284, 295, 325, 377 7:14–20 122 7:14 8, 259, 317, 381 7:15–25 55, 57, 377 7:15–20 319 7:15 319 7:16 257, 259, 319, 377 7:17 319, 325, 326 7:18 319, 346, 347, 377 7:19 122, 319 7:20 319, 325, 326 7:21 122, 319 7:22–8:2 123 7:22 377 7:23 325 8 268, 294, 315, 351 8:1 377 8:2 239 8:3–4 122, 267, 295, 310, 408 8:3 8, 12, 13, 17, 245, 259, 282, 284, 349, 376, 377, 381, 398 8:4 8, 17, 123, 142, 239, 240, 263, 290, 291, 293, 294, 295, 332, 381, 387, 388, 393, 399 8:5–14 333 8:5–8 260, 263, 295 8:7–8 13, 57, 62, 259, 284, 333, 346, 364, 377, 388, 398 8:7 282, 377 8:8 71 8:9–17 399 8:9–11 295, 326 8:9 263, 285, 333, 334, 378, 381 8:10 11, 267 8:13–14 123, 263, 285 8:13 17, 267, 351

8:14–16 8 8:15–17 267 8:15 350 8:17 11 8:18–25 267 8:18–23 367 8:19–23 359 8:22–25 393 8:23 267, 393 8:27 390 8:31 276 8:32 267 8:35–36 267 9–11 239, 268–286, 370 9 246, 271, 274, 275 9:1–5 272, 392 9:1–3 268 9:3–4 270 9:3 8, 270, 376 9:4–5 56, 274, 382 9:4 122, 247, 249, 270, 399, 405 9:5 9, 376 9:6–29 276, 284 9:6–23 278, 280, 283 9:6–13 274 9:6–7 270 9:6 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 382 9:7 271 9:8 270, 271 9:11–18 273 9:11–12 207, 272, 273, 277, 278, 279 9:11 224, 272, 273 9:12 272, 273, 276, 277, 278 9:14–23 273 9:14 276 9:15 277 9:16 248, 272, 277 9:17–23 272 9:18 277 9:22–23 274 9:24–29 272 9:24 272 9:25 385 9:27–29 349 9:27 272 9:30–10:21 276 9:30–10:13 276, 285, 370, 371 9:30–10:3 280 9:30–32 280 9:30–31 123, 276, 277, 402



New Testament

9:30 276, 277 9:31–10:5 59 9:31–32 259, 278, 283 9:31 55, 62, 123, 272, 277, 281, 282, 370, 371, 373 9:32–33 382 9:32 207, 224, 273, 276, 277, 278, 281, 282, 283 9:33 276 10 246, 259, 275, 276 10:1 15, 268, 274, 378, 392 10:2 123, 370 10:3–5 62 10:3 269, 277, 278, 281, 370, 373 10:4–5 282 10:4 220, 282, 283, 407, 408 10:5–17 220 10:5–13 276, 280, 402 10:5–10 342 10:5–6 281, 293 10:5 12, 49, 55, 58, 122, 220, 221, 247, 251, 252, 258, 280, 281, 282, 283, 293, 332, 370, 374, 382, 387, 398, 400, 402, 408 10:6–13 281, 282 10:6–8 220 10:6–7 280 10:6 281, 340, 370 10:8 280 10:9–13 16 10:10 340 10:13 15, 108 10:14–21 208, 269 10:17 174, 218, 243, 262, 279, 340 10:18–21 277 10:19 272 10:20 277 10:21 269, 272, 273–274 11 8, 269, 272, 274, 275, 392 11:1–10 274, 276 11:1–7 275, 278 11:1–6 275, 392 11:1–5 272 11:1 8, 56, 268, 376 11:2–4 392 11:2 272 11:5–7 278 11:5–6 207 11:5 278

11:6

425

208, 224, 248, 262, 278, 279 11:7–10 278 11:7 272, 277, 278 11:11 382 11:13–24 10 11:13–14 274, 392 11:13 399 11:14 15, 349, 378 11:16–17 209 11:16 392 11:17–22 382 11:20 269, 382 11:23 15, 269, 382, 392 11:25–36 284 11:25–32 58 11:25–26 269, 270, 272 11:25 275, 383 11:26 204, 269, 382, 392 11:28 382 11:29 382, 392 11:30–32 269 11:31 269 11:32 276, 351, 382 11:33–36 383 11:36 286 12:1 394 12:2 18, 331, 334, 375 12:5 11 12:6–8 334 12:9 18, 109, 400 12:13 390 12:17 109, 365 12:18 366 13 366, 367 13:1–5 311 13:3–4 124, 366 13:3 292, 311, 400 13:8–10 15, 17, 18, 55, 123, 240, 290, 292, 294, 301, 310, 332, 387, 389, 399, 400 13:8 293, 332 13:9–10 294 13:10 142, 293, 332 13:11 393 13:14 17 14:1–15:13 123 14:1–15:6 10, 16, 142 14 10, 376, 389 14:1–9 11 14:2 10, 123, 376 14:3 10 14:5 10, 331, 376, 390

426

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

14:10 10 14:13–23 110 14:13–22 11, 376 14:14 10, 114, 123, 136, 157, 330, 376, 390, 393 14:17 301 14:18 365 14:20 393 14:23 376 15:1–3 124 15:1 10 15:3 386 15:4 113, 385, 400 15:8–12 272 15:14 334 15:15–21 108 15:15–16 394 15:15 335 15:16 391 15:18 285 15:20–21 360 15:25–26 392 15:27 209, 272 15:31 392 16:1 394 16:2 390 16:15 390 16:16 369, 393 16:19 18, 109, 400 I Corinthians 1 348 1:2 11, 171, 369, 391 1:3 15 1:9 171 1:18–31 284 1:18–25 378 1:18–21 108 1:18 57, 108, 175, 255, 351, 359, 369 1:20 277 1:21 108, 273, 340, 359, 369, 390 1:24 171, 273, 340 1:26–29 277 1:26 171 1:27–31 269 1:27–28 277 1:27 348 1:28 218, 243 1:30 391 2:4–5 279 2:12 350

3:5–9 359 3:9 395 3:16–17 395 4:4 254 4:15 243 4:17 335 5:1 17, 366 5:7 19, 260, 386, 389 5:13 54, 60, 255 6 401 6:1–2 369 6:1 255 6:6 340 6:9–11 391 6:9–10 54, 255, 359 6:9 362 6:11 304, 391, 392 6:12–20 17, 121, 389, 401 6:12 331 6:15–20 334 6:15 11 6:19 395 7 10 7:10–11 333 7:10 183, 290 7:12–13 341 7:14 391 7:15 391 7:16 392 7:17–24 171 7:17–20 389 7:17 10, 290, 375 7:19 290, 375 7:20 10, 375 7:21 10, 341 7:24 10 7:25 290 7:28 10, 389 7:40 334 8–10 401 8:7–13 376 8:7 363 8:9–13 11 8:13 11 9:1 385 9:8–10 292, 385, 401 9:8 120 9:9 120, 240 9:10 113 9:12 11 9:13 394 9:14 333 9:16 108



New Testament

9:19–23 11 9:19–22 349 9:20–23 11 9:20–22 378 9:20–21 10, 107, 120, 239, 375, 376, 389, 398, 399 9:20 11, 15, 119, 123, 330, 371, 375, 376, 389 9:21 16, 119, 401 9:22 15, 108, 255, 359 9:23 292 10:1–12 113, 400 10:11 385, 400 10:14–22 110, 389 10:15 334 10:23–11:1 121, 376, 389 10:23 331 10:25–26 393 10:27 340 10:28 110 10:31 292 10:32 369, 376 10:33 255, 359 11:7–12 400 11:13 334 11:14 27 11:16 369 11:20 370 11:22 369 11:23–25 183 11:23 3, 167 11:25 405 11:32 54, 60, 255, 359 12:3 334, 393 12:7–8 334 12:11 334 12:27 11 12:28 369 14:21 49, 113, 120 14:22–24 340 14:22 340 14:34 120, 292, 401 14:37 334 14:40 403 15:1–4 129 15:3–8 385 15:3–7 183 15:3 3, 167, 259, 262 15:9 369 15:10 229, 285 15:11 279 15:14 279 15:21–22 378

427

15:22 351 15:23 369 15:34 363 15:56 121, 408 16:1 392 16:20 393 2 Corinthians 1:1 391 1:3 15 1:12 285 1:22 393 1:24 334 2:15–16 57, 340 2:15 351, 359, 369 3 121, 315, 316, 370 3:3 240, 315 3:6–14 282 3:6–11 121 3:6 121, 295, 315, 318, 320, 323, 328–329, 399, 405 3:7–18 315 3:7–11 61, 247, 387, 388 3:7–9 381 3:7 58, 140, 249, 328, 329, 347, 380, 381, 406 3:8 328 3:9 58, 121, 140, 328, 347, 380, 381, 406 3:11 8, 328, 380, 408 3:13 328 3:14–15 316, 328 3:14 15, 328, 405, 408 4:3 351, 359 4:4 60 4:6 218, 243, 279–280 4:10–11 277 5:14–15 340 5:16 9 5:17 108, 333, 350, 351, 378 5:18–6:1 279 5:19–20 338 5:20 167, 172, 348, 359 5:21 262 6:1–2 351, 385 6:1 172, 350 6:2 402 6:6 393 6:14–7:1 391 6:14 254, 255, 345 6:16–18 110, 385 7:1 391 8:4 392

428

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

8:8 324 8:15 240 8:21 109, 365 9:1 392 9:12 392 10:3 334 10:7 11 10:8 334 11:4 350 11:22 8 11:24 16 12:9–10 277 12:9 285 13:10 334 13:12 393 Galatians 1 371, 373 1:4 139, 140, 367, 379 1:6–7 138 1:6 144, 171 1:13–16 370 1:13–14 9, 14, 15, 59, 369, 377, 386 1:13 80, 144, 372, 375 1:14 1, 61, 62, 370, 373 1:15–16 385 1:15 144 1:16 108 1:17 385 1:20 15 1:23 340, 375 2 371 2:4–5 11 2:11–14 12 2:13–14 9, 16 2:14 9, 197 2:15–17 60, 258 2:15–16 79, 378 2:15 8, 378 2:16 79, 121, 139, 284, 371, 379, 380, 382, 398, 399, 408 2:17 12, 79, 139 2:18–19 9 2:18 13 2:19–20 378 2:19 14, 122, 123, 333, 371, 375, 376, 388, 389, 399, 406 2:20 285, 334, 340, 376 2:21 16, 60, 79, 121, 341, 347, 379, 382, 387, 398

3 129, 240, 388, 405 3:2–5 408 3:2 279, 350 3:3 284, 377 3:5 279 3:6–13 386 3:6–9 60, 122, 341, 400 3:6–7 12, 339 3:7–9 375 3:7–8 58 3:8 386 3:10–13 372, 408 3:10–12 398 3:10 12, 14, 49, 58, 60, 121, 139, 199, 213, 240, 249, 258, 293, 328. 332, 374. 379, 380, 388, 400 3:11–13 19 3:11–12 121, 342, 371, 375, 402 3:11 121 3:12 12, 49, 55, 58, 121, 139, 227, 245, 247, 252, 258, 281, 282, 293, 374, 380, 382, 387, 398, 400, 402, 408 3:13–14 239 3:13 14, 58, 60, 122, 139, 140, 375, 399, 400 3:14 58, 122, 350 3:15–18 16, 122, 375 3:15–17 379 3:16–19 16 3:16 386 3:17–25 389 3:17–21 405 3:17–19 16, 139, 408 3:17 18, 49 3:18–20 379 3:18 18 3:19–25 282, 406 3:19–22 408 3:19 8, 13, 121, 125, 199, 295, 324, 379, 380 3:21–26 259, 261 3:21–25 16, 379 3:21–24 12, 139 3:21–22 16 3:21 16, 58, 121, 139, 240, 245, 283, 379, 382, 387, 398 3:22 8, 58, 60, 369, 390 3:23–4:5 329 3:23–26 140, 399



3:23–25

New Testament

8, 14, 122, 380, 389, 402, 408 3:24–25 139 3:24 121 3:27–28 124 3:27 11 3:28 11 3:29 11, 58, 122, 375, 400 4:1–5 408 4:3–7 399 4:4–7 8 4:4–5 14, 259, 375, 389 4:4 138, 349, 375, 399 4:5–6 239 4:5 58, 60, 122, 139, 140, 330, 372, 375, 399 4:8–9 60 4:9–11 331 4:9 229 4:10 331 4:12 9, 16 4:21–5:6 18 4:21–5:1 369, 371, 375, 376, 390 4:21 371 4:24–25 14 4:24 18, 58, 121, 375, 379, 405 5 403 5:1–4 121, 142 5:1 122, 375, 390 5:2–4 18 5:3 141, 290, 291, 292, 293, 307, 328, 331, 332, 374, 376, 390, 400 5:4–5 280 5:4 144, 341, 371, 375 5:6 142, 144, 389 5:8 171 5:11 202 5:12 290 5:13–26 17 5:13 290, 291, 331 5:14 17, 122, 139, 142, 240, 245, 289–296, 301, 310, 380, 387, 399 5:15 291 5:16–25 375, 393 5:16–24 297 5:16–21 334 5:16 17, 122, 123, 142, 294, 332, 399 5:18 14, 122, 123, 139, 142, 285, 290, 291, 375, 389, 399

429

5:19–21 139, 359, 391 5:19 142 5:20 362 5:22–23 8, 139, 142, 294, 310, 334, 376, 387, 391, 399 5:22 285 5:23 7, 290 5:24 333, 369, 378 5:25 122, 142, 285, 332, 333, 399 6:2 122, 401 6:6 394 6:8 347 6:9 292 6:12 371 6:13 332 6:14 269 6:15 108, 142, 350, 389 6:18 144 Ephesians 1:10 351 1:13–14 393 2:8–9 280 2:12 405 2:14–15 124 2:19–22 395 4:1 171 4:17–19 363 4:30 393 5:5–6 351 5:25–27 391 6:2–3 401 Philippians 1:1 11, 391, 394 1:6 15, 285, 359 1:9–11 334 1:9–10 332 1:14 369 1:19–24 394 1:27 108 1:28 60, 255 1:29 218, 243, 280, 340, 359 2:8 350 2:9–11 367 2:10 15 2:12–13 229 2:13 285 2:15 255 2:17 394 3 124, 199, 227, 230, 259, 370, 371

430

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

3:2–9 59 3:2–3 124 3:2 370 3:3–6 284, 377 3:3–4 57, 259 3:4–11 370, 375 3:4–10 259 3:4–6 61, 124 3:5–6 386 3:5 8, 31, 373 3:6 15, 55, 57, 62, 240, 259, 281, 369, 370, 372, 374, 377 3:7–9 59, 124 3:7–8 369 3:9 251, 281, 342, 370, 371, 374, 375, 402 3:12 218 3:15 334 3:17–21 17 4:8 109, 303, 365 4:18 394 4:22 369 Colossians 1:5–6 175, 340 1:20 351 2:8 300 2:11 124, 323 2:14 124 2:16–23 300 2:16–17 124, 260, 331, 389 2:16 300 2:17 19, 300, 347 2:23 300 3:6 351 3:11 124 4:17 293 1 Thessalonians 1:4–7 391 1:4 273 1:5 174 1:6 174, 350 1:7 340, 369, 390 1:9–10 57 1:10 54, 60, 255, 345, 359, 378 2:4 359 2:7 334 2:10 303, 340, 369, 390 2:12 108, 171 2:13 172, 174, 279, 338, 340, 350, 359, 391

2:16 60 4:3–8 110, 334, 391, 401 4:5 363 4:6 60 4:7–8 391 4:10 369 4:12 365 4:15–5:2 15 5:2–10 359 5:2–9 54 5:2–3 60 5:3–10 255 5:3 345 5:9 60, 338, 378, 402 5:12 394 5:23 391 5:24 171 5:25–27 369 5:26 393 2 Thessalonians 1:8 340 2:13 391 2:14 172, 340, 359 3:1 340 1 Timothy 1 299, 311 1:3–11 297–313 1:3–4 301 1:3 299 1:4–7 301, 309 1:4–5 298, 299 1:4 124, 298, 300 1:5–6 299 1:5 299, 301 1:6 298 1:7–9 300 1:7 298, 299, 302 1:8–11 297, 301, 305, 309, 310 1:8–10 304 1:8 301, 305 1:9–11 302 1:9–10 305, 307, 309 1:9 124, 300, 302, 303, 304, 310 1:10 302, 303, 304 1:11 304 1:13 304 1:14 304 1:15–16 304 1:15 304 1:19 298



2:1–4 366 3:7 365 4 300 4:1 298 4:3–5 393 4:3 124, 299, 300 4:4–5 299–300 5:24 298 6:3 298 6:10 298 6:11 303 6:21 298 2 Timothy 2:22 303 3:15 301, 385 3:16 301, 303 4:8 303 Titus 1 300 1:14 298, 299, 300 1:15 299 2:11–12 304 2:12 303 3:3 304 3:5–7 304 3:5 304 3:7 303 3:9 298, 299 Philemon 8–9 334 10–11 341 Hebrews 2:1–4 125, 307 2:2 121 3:1 171 3:7–4:11 126 7:5 125 7:6–7 125 7:11–12 125 7:11 125 7:12 306, 307 7:15–22 125 7:16 125 7:18–19 125 7:19 125 7:25 125 7:26 125 7:28 125 8:3–4 125

New Testament

8:13 125, 306 9:6–10 125 9:9 126 9:14 125 9:19–20 125 9:22 125 9:28 125 10:1–4 125 10:1 125, 126, 347, 389 10:3 126 10:4 347 10:8 125 10:11 125 10:14 125 10:19–22 125 10:28–31 125 11:1–12:2 126 James 1:18 126 1:21 126, 174, 175 1:25 126, 127 1:27 126 2:1 126 2:5 127 2:8 126 2:9–11 127 2:10 126, 307 2:11 126 2:12 127 4:11 127 4:12 127 1 Peter 1:14–16 127 1:15 171 1:23–25 126, 174, 175 2:9 171 2:12 365 2:21 127 3:6 127 3:16 365 4:1–4 127 4:1 127 4:7–11 104 2 Peter 2:5–8 127 2:15–16 127 2:21 127 3:2 127 3:5–6 127

431

432

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

1 John 2:3–4 127 2:6 127 2:7–8 127 2:20 306 2:27 306, 333 3:7 252 3:12 127 3:22–24 127 4:7–8 127 4:21 127 5:2–3 127

2 John 5–6 127 Jude 1 171 5 127 7 127 11 127 Revelation 12:17 127 14:12 127

Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha 1 Esdras 1:23 69 4:36–38 69 4:36–37 30 1 Maccabees 1:41–50 24 1:56 147 2:29–41 32 2.41 152 3:29–30 146 6:55–59 146 2 Maccabees 4:14–15 150 5:17 29 5:20 29 6:1–11 24 6:12–16 29 6:18–31 98 6:21–22 93 7:7 93 7:18 29 7:24 93 7:32–38 29 11:24–25 24, 146 15:9 23 4 Maccabees 1:1 69, 86 1:2–4 90 1:2 88, 89, 91 1:3 69 1:5 69 1:6 89

1:7–9 90 1:7–8 88 1:7 69, 86 1:9 69 1:10 86, 88 1:11 87 1:12 86, 88, 90 1:13–3:18 90 1:17 87, 90 1:18 90 1:30 89 1:33–35 91 1:33–34 87, 107 2 90 2:1–3 92 2:4–6 91 2:6 86 2:8–9 91 2:8 107 2:14 89 2:17–18 92 2:19–20 92 2:21–23 25, 90, 107 2:23 90, 107, 147 3:2–5 89 3:3 86 3:6–18 92 3:18 88, 92 3:19–18:24 92 3:19 86, 88, 92 3:20 87 4:1–14 92 4:5 87 4:19–21 92 4:20 87



Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

5–7 92 5:5–26 91 5:5–13 93 5:16–24 97 5:16 107 5:18 87, 107 5:19–21 29, 105, 153 5:20–21 103, 105 5:22–24 25 5:22 103 5:23–24 90, 92, 93, 147 5:25–26 27, 94, 97 5:25 358 5:33 87, 107 6:17–23 96 6:18–21 97 6:21 87, 107 6:22 94 6:23 97 6:31–7:23 92 7:1 87 7:18–19 89 8:1–14:10 92 8:5–11 93 8:14 93 8:16 89 8:22 93 8:25 93 9:8 94 9:9 94 9:17 92 9:18 89, 91 9:23–24 94, 98 9:32 94 10:11 94 10:21 94 11:3 94 11:5 91, 107 11:23 94 11:27 92 13:1–14:10 92 13:9–18 94, 98 13:17 94 14:11–17:6 92 14:11 89 14:13 89 15:10 90 16:5 89 16:16–23 94, 100 16:24 100 16:25 94 17:7–18:24 88, 92 17:18 94

18:1–2 93, 103 18:1 87, 89, 93, 102 18:6–19 92 18:7–19 94, 101 Baruch 1:15–3:8 29, 30 1:19–22 68 2:27–35 29 2:31–32 68 3:7 68 3:36 27 4:1 27, 68, 358 Judith 5:17–21 65 5:17–18 29 5:17 65 5:19 65 5:21 65 8:8 65 8:20 65 8:31 65 11:10 65 13:20 65 14:10 65 Prayer of Azariah 1:4–10 30 Prayer of Manasseh 7–8 69 8 30 Sirach 2:8 67 6:32–33 67 7:1–2 67 7:36 67 8:5 68 9:12 253 9:14–15 27 11:22 67 15 30, 67 15:1 27 15:11–17:24 70 15:11–20 67 15:14–17 30 15:15–17 213 16:12–14 67 17.11–12 28 19:16 30, 68 21:27 67

433

434

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

23:4–6 68 24 26 24:23–27 358 24:23 26, 28, 257 24:25–27 27 28:2 68 28:4 68 28:7 28 33:10–15 68 35:5 67 35:24 67 37:3 68 37:15 68 42:24 68 44:17 68 48:15 68 49:4–7 29 49:4 68 Tobit 1:3 30, 65 1:4–5 65 1:10 65 3:3 30, 65 3:14 65 4:5–19 65 4:5–6 65 4:17 65 4:19 65 5:14 65 9:6 65 12:6–10 65, 102 12:7 65 13:1–17 29 13:6 65 13:9 65 13:11 65 13:16 65 14:6 65 14:7 65 14:8 65 Wisdom of Solomon 1:1–2 66 1:8 66 2:23–24 66 3:1–9 66 3:10 66 3:12–13 67 4:7–9 66 4:16 66 5:15 66 6:9 66

6:12 66 6:21 66 7:1–6 66 7:7–11 66 8:21–9:18 66 9:5 66 9:10–12 66 9:17–18 66 10:1 66 10:4–6 66 10:10 66 10:15–11:14 66 10:15 66 11:15 66 11:23–24 66 12:2–27 66 12:10–11 66 12:26 66 13:6–7 66 13:8–9 66 14:12 66 14:15–21 66 14:27 66 14:30–31 66 15:2–4 66 2 Baruch 9:1 72 11:4 72 14:5–7 72 18:1–2 31 18:2 72 19:1 72 21:11 72 24:1 72 41:4 72 42:5 72 44:7 29 46:5–6 29 48:38–40 72 48:42–43 72 48:45–47 27 51:1–12 30 51:16 72 54:14–19 72 54:14–16 30, 72 54:14 27 55:2 72 56:5–7 72 77:6–7 72 84:11 30, 72



1 Enoch 1–36 70 1:9 70 5:4–5 70 5:8 70 6:1–8:3 70 10:21 70 12:17 70 27:2 70 37–71 70 38:1 70 45:1–2 70 46:5–8 70 50:2–3 70 60:6 70 63:6–9 70 81 70 81:5 70 81:9 70 90:37–38 70 91–105 70 91:4 71 91:14 70 91:19 71 94:1 71 94:3 71 94:4 70 94:6–11 70 95:5–7 70 96:5–8 70 97:7–10 70 98:4 70 98:8 70 104:6 71 104:9 70 2 Enoch 2:2 71 9:1 71 18:4 71 30:15 71 36:4 71 41:2 71 42:6 71 70:1 71 4 Ezra 3:21–22 71 3:26 71 4:30 71 6:32 72 7:21–22 72 7:[46] 30

Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

7:[48] 71 7:[52–61] 31, 72 7:[68] 30 7:[72–73] 30 7:[72] 27 7:[77] 72 7:[78–99] 30 7:[88–89] 72 7:[92] 72 7:48[118] 71 7:57–61  [127–131] 72 8:1–3 31, 72 8:47–49 72 8:55–60 30, 72 9:10–12 30, 72 Apocalypse of Abraham 13:7–14 73 23:9–13 73 Ascension of Isaiah 1:9 75 2:4 75 3:11 75 Joseph and Asenath 8:9 75 11:7–8 75 12:5 75 15:7 75 19:5 75 22:13 75 23:9 75 27:1 75 27:10 75 Jubilees 1:7–14 74 1:15–25 29 1:15 74 1:20 74 1:22 74 1:23 74, 322 2:17–22 75 2:25 75 2:29–30 32 2:30 27 2:31–33 75 5:13–16 75 5:17–18 74 6:17–19 75 6:18 27

435

436

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

7:27 75 8:3 75 10:8 75 11:5–6 75 12:20 30, 74 15:25–27 75 15:26 75 15:27 27 15:28–29 75 15:31–32 75 15:33–34 74 16:17–18 75 17:17–18 74 18:9–12 74 19:28 74 21:21 75 22:10 30 22:16–18 75 22:19 30 22:22 75 22:23 30 23:10 74 23:16 28 30:14 74 33:18 74 34:18–19 74 35:3 74 35:6 74 35:12 74 41:25 74 50:6–13 32 50:12 32 Letter of Aristeas 3 147 10–11 24, 147 16 74 18 74 130 74 231 74 237 74 238 74 248 74 271 74 272 74 274 74 277 74 278 74 282 74 290 74 292 74

Life of Adam and Eve (Apocalypse of Moses; Vita) Apocalypse of Moses 10:2 76 13:5 76 16 76 21:3–5 76 28:4 76 30:1 76 32:2 76 Vita 12–16 76 27:3 76 33 76 44:2 76 Psalms of Solomon 2:1–21 29 3:5–6 30 3:6–11 77 3:12 30 8:1–22 29 9:4–5 30, 77, 213 9:6–7 30 10:1–3 30, 77 13:6–11 77 13:11 77 14:1–10 30 16:11 77 Pseudo-Philo (L. A. B.) 1:16 76 4:11 76 4:16 76 6:3 76 11:1–2 27, 76 12:2 76 12:4 76 13:8–9 76 14:1 31 14:4 31 16:4–5 76 19:9 30, 76 19:10 76 21:2 30 22:5 76 26:14 76 28:4 76 30:4 76 35:3 76 38:1–2 76 49:3 76



437

Dead Sea Scrolls

Testament of Abraham 1:4–7 73 4:6 73 9:4–6 73 10:12–13 74 10:14 74 11:12 31, 74 Testament of Job 8:2–3 73 14:2–3 73 16:2 73 20:2 73 23:11 73 26:6 73 27:2–6 73 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs T. Asher 1:3–5 73 1:5 73 1:8–9 73 5:4 73 T. Benjamin 3:3–4 73 6:1 73 T. Dan 1:3 73 4:7 73

5:1 73 T. Issachar 3:2–4 73 4:1 73 4:4 73 7:7 73 T. Joseph 1:3 73 T. Judah 20:1–3 73 T. Levi 19:1 73 T. Naphtali 3:1 73 8:6 73 T. Reuben 4:4 73 4:11 73 T. Simeon 3:4 73 3:5 73 5:2 73 T. Zebulon 1:4–5 73 1:5–4:13 73 Sibylline Oracles 3.265–281 29

Dead Sea Scrolls 1QpHab VII, 10–12 VIII, 1–3 VIII, 8–13 XI, 13

77 77 77 322

1QH IV, 21–24 V, 21–23 VI, 11–12 VI, 17–18 VII, 16–26 IX, 7–8 IX, 20 IX, 21–23 XII, 12–19 XII, 29–32 XII, 38 XIV, 6–7 XV, 12–13

78 78 78 77 78 78 78 78 77 78 78 77 77

XV, 28 XVII, 14–17

78 30, 78

1QM I, 10 XIII, 9–15

78 78

1QS I, 7 I, 8–9 I, 11 I, 13–15 II, 1–2 II, 11–17 III, 13-IV, 24 III, 13–17 III, 17–21 III, 20–21 III, 21–25 IV, 25–26

77 35 77 77 77 77 78 78 78 78 78 78

438

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

V, 1 V, 6 V, 7–10 V, 8–9 V, 8 V, 9 V, 10–13 V, 10 V, 11 V, 12 VI, 6–8 VIII, 1–2 VIII, 15–16 IX, 17–19 IX, 18–21 XI, 9–11 XI, 11–15

77 77 28 35 77 151 77 77 35 35 36 35 35 35 77, 79 79 30

1Q28a I, 2–3

77

1Q28b I, 1–2

77

4Q169 [4QpNah] 3–4 II, 2 34 3–4 II, 4 34 3–4 III, 6–7 34 4 III, 3–4 77 4Q180 [4QAges] I, 1–4 78 4Q393 1–2 II, 5–6

30

4Q504 30 4Q525 2 II, 3–4

27

4QMMT 31 93–94 77 109–117 77 11Q5 XIX, 15 XXIV, 7

78 30, 78

11Q19 LVII, 17–18

33

CD I, 8–11 II, 14–16 III, 12–16 III, 13–17 IV, 19 IV, 20–21 V, 12 VI, 2–11 VII, 4–6 VIII, 12 VIII, 18 X, 14-XI, 18 X, 21 XI, 5–7 XI, 7–9 XV, 5–10 XV, 9–10

35 77 79 35 34 33 35 35 77 34 34 32 32 32 32 28 35

Rabbinic Texts Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael Pisha 5, on Exod 12:6 64 6, on Exod 12:8 34 11, on Exod 12:23 64 16, on Exod 13:4 64 Beshallah 7, on Exod 14:20 64 Vayassa‘ 1, on Exod 15:26 30, 64

Bahodesh 1, on Exod 19:2 64 5, on Exod 20:2 27, 29 5–6, on Exod 20:2–3 Sifre Deuteronomy 41, on 11:13 29 153, on 17:9 150 269, on 24:1 33 343, on 33:2 27 351, on 33:10 34

64

Josephus

Mishnah Avot 1:1 1, 34 1:3 29 1:13 36 1:17 36 2:1 29, 153, 331 2:6 36 2:8 36 2:16 36 3:2 36 3:3 36 3:6 36 3:14 34 3:18 36 4:2 29, 153, 331 4:5 36 4:10 36 Demai 2:2–3 149

Ketubbot 13.1–9 151 Parah 11:5–6 152 Sanhedrin 10 271 10:1–4 275 10:1 149 11:3 152 Shabbat 7:2 32 Sotah 5:3 32 Yadayim 3:2 152

Tosefta

Eruvin 5:1–3 152

Demai 2:2 149

Gittin 9:10

Babylonian Talmud

33, 156

Hagigah 1:8 152

Shabbat 31a 151 Yoma 71b 150

Josephus Against Apion 1.7 148 1.42 64 1.43–44 25, 148 1.60 64 1.190–192 64 1.209 24, 32 2.45–47 24 2.82 64, 148 2.145–146 25, 147 2.150 25, 64, 148 2.154–156 25, 148 2.154 24, 147 2.156 25, 64, 148 2.161 24, 147 2.163 25, 147

2.170–174 25, 147 2.171–174 148 2.178 64 2.183–184 25, 148 2.184 64 2.199 361 2.220–225 148 2.220–224 25, 64 2.226 25, 148 2.227–228 25, 148 2.228 64 2.234–235 25, 148 2.250–270 147 2.257 25 2.273–275 361 2.279–281 25

439

440

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

2.282–284 26 Antiquities 1.6 25, 147 1.15 25, 147 1.18–24 24, 147 3.94 148 3.213 24 3.223 28, 64 4.165 147 4.194 24, 147 4:215–216 24 4.292 148 4.318–319 28 12.5–6 147 12.56 147 12.142 23, 146 13.172 78 13.257–258 24 13.293–298 148 13.294 149 13.297–298 151 13.297 33, 373 13.397 24 14.213–216 24 14.215–216 24 14.223–227 24 14.226 32 14.235 24

14.245–246 24 15.254 24 16.44 148 17.41 149 18.16 150 18.18 78 18.55–59 26 18.261–309 26 20.115–117 147 20.199 149 20.264 150 Jewish War 1.110 31, 149 2.162 31, 149 2.169–174 26 2.229 147 4.184 146 5.401–402 146 5.405–406 146 6.99–102 146 6.334 146 Life 10–12 31 134–135 24, 147 161 24, 32 191 31, 149

Philo Abraham 3–6 28, 358 5–6 305 16 28, 305, 358 60–61 28, 358 275–276 28, 305, 358 Allegorical Interpretation (Legum allegoriae) 1.92–94 305 Creation 1–3 24, 147 3 27, 358 170–172 25 Decalogue 1 305 15–17 28

Embassy 210–211 26 210 28 Moses 1.162 28, 358 2.12 28, 148 2.14–15 25, 148 2.17–44 26 2.36 28, 358 2.45–51 24, 147 2.48 27 2.51 27 2.52 257 Special Laws 1.304–305 322 1.314 25 3.39 361



Greek and Roman Authors

65 25 140–141 25 194 305

4.61 25 4.226 25 Virtues 18 25

Greek and Roman Authors Antiphanes Frag 288

Dio Chrysostom 307

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 4.1128a 308 Politics 1.1253a 308 3.1284a 308 4.1292a 308

75.2 308 76.4 308

Diodorus of Sicily Bibliotheca historica 1.94.1–2 147 34/35.1–4 147

Diogenes Laertius

Rhetoric 1.1375a 308

2.68 309 5.20 309 6.11 308

Cicero

Euripides

Duties (De officiis) 3.75–76 308

Suppliant Women 429–434 307

Laws (De legibus) 1.40–41 308 2.11 308

Herodotus

Moral Ends (De finibus) 2.71 308 Republic (De re publica) 1.3 309 Stoic Paradoxes (Paradoxa Stoicorum) 5.34 309

Demosthenes Meidias 76 308 227 308

(Ps.) Demosthenes 25 (Aristogeiton 1).20 308

History 4.106 308 7.104 307

Homer Odyssey 9.105–115 308 9.213–215 308 9.273–278 308

Isocrates Antidosis 238 309 Areopagus 20 308

Lucian Demonax 59 308

441

442 Lucretius 5.1141–1160 308

Lysias 1.47–48 308 22.20 308 27.5 308

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature

Statesman (Politicus) 294a–302a 308

Plutarch Stoic Self-Contradictions (De Stoicorum Repugnantiis) 1038a 309

Plato

Seneca

Gorgias 526a 308 527b-c 308

Epistles 90.6 308 94 106 95 106

Laws 1.636c 361 4.713c–714a 308 9.854c 308 9.870e–871a 308 9.875c-d 308 Protagorus 324a-c 308 Republic 2.360c 307 3.405c 309 9.571b 308 9.574e 308 9.590d-e 308

Stobaeus Florilegium 37.21 307

Strabo Geography 16. 2. 37

147

Thucydides 2.37.3 308

Early Christian Authors Augustine

Clement of Alexandria

Against Faustus 6.2 143 10.2 143

Stromata 4. 3. 10

City of God 19.25 367 Spirit and the Letter 26.44–27.47 364

307

Ignatius Magnesians 8.1 300 9.1 300 10.3 300 Philadelphians 6.1 300 8.2 300

Author Index Alexander, Philip S. 53, 54, 64, 78, 79, 82 Aletti, Jean-Noël 212, 219, 220, 232 Allison, Dale C., Jr. 2, 4, 20, 21, 134, 141, 144, 165, 178 Allo, E. B. 316, 335 Alon, Gedalyahu 149, 161 Anderson, Gary A. 36 Anderson, H. 89, 110 Atkinson, K. M. T. 150, 161 Althaus, Paul 325, 335 Aune, David E. 170, 177, 185, 193 Avemarie, Friedrich 64, 82

Boyarin, Daniel 209, 233 Braulik, Georg 47, 49 Breitenstein, Urs 86, 87, 110 Brown, Ernest Faulkner 299, 312 Brox, Norbert 299, 304, 312 Bruce, F. F. 327, 335 Bultmann, Rudolf 167, 177, 179, 180, 184, 185, 189, 190, 193, 238, 239, 249, 253, 263, 317, 318, 319, 320, 325, 335, 345, 352, 381 Burton, Ernest de Witt 293, 296 Byrskog, Samuel 167, 177, 178, 181, 185, 193

Banks, Robert J. 154, 156, 157, 161 Barclay, John M. G. 10, 16, 20, 36, 53, 54, 60, 66, 74, 76, 82, 87, 91, 109, 110, 183, 193, 208, 211, 233, 369, 376, 383, 390, 395 Barr, James 44, 45, 49 Barrett, C. K. 283, 286, 298, 299, 301, 302, 303, 312, 321, 328, 335, 376, 383, 389, 391, 393, 395 Barth, Gerhard 128, 164 Barth, Karl 61, 232, 233 Barton, Stephen C. 385, 395 Bauckham, Richard 70, 71, 82, 167, 168, 177 Bauer, Walter 322, 335 Baumgarten, Albert I. 36, 373, 383 Baumgarten, Joseph M. 36 Bell, Richard H. 212, 227, 233 Bernard, J. H. 301, 312 Betz, Hans Dieter 292, 294, 296 Bickerman, Elias J. 86, 110, 146, 147, 161 Bläser, Peter 328, 331, 332, 335 Boccaccini, Gabriele 36, 51, 53, 62, 64, 67, 74, 83, 386, 395 Bockmuehl, Markus 36, 358, 367 Boring, M. Eugene 351, 352 Bornkamm, Günther 172, 177, 325, 334, 335 Boström, Lennart 266, 286

Caird, G. B. 182, 193 Calvin, John 16, 18, 143, 299, 363, 367, 398, 403–411 Campbell, William S. 208, 209, 233 Campenhausen, Hans von 334, 335 Chester, Stephen J. 377, 383 Clements, Ronald E. 46, 47, 48, 49, 271, 286 Cohen, Boaz 315, 335 Cohn, Haim H. 152, 161 Collins, Adela Yarbro 169, 174, 178 Collins, John J. 70, 83, 90, 110 Cranfield, C. E. B. 165, 178, 188, 193, 270, 273, 274, 286, 316, 317, 327, 331, 335, 393, 395, 407 Dahl, Nils Alstrup 182, 193, 335, 336 Dalman, Gustaf 131, 144 Das, A. Andrew 211, 216, 217, 233 Daube, David 5, 21, 152, 161 Davies, Glenn N. 212, 223, 233 Davies, W. D. 4, 21, 134, 141, 144, 165, 178, 200 DeSilva, David A. 86, 87, 88, 89, 110 Dibelius, Martin 85, 96, 98, 102, 304, 311, 312 Di Lella, Alexander A. 68, 83 Dimant, Devorah 386, 396 Dinkler, Erich 272, 286

444

Author Index

Dodd, C. H. 6, 21, 42, 43, 49, 323, 336, 362, 367 Donaldson, Terence L. 75, 83, 202, 233, 269, 286, 372, 378, 382, 383, 392, 396 Doughty, Darrel J. 280, 286 Drane, John W. 289, 296 Dunn, James D. G. 14, 21, 128, 198, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 211, 217, 221, 229, 233, 249, 253, 263, 266, 270, 273, 281, 282, 286, 311, 312, 376, 382, 383, 386, 392, 396 Dupont-Sommer, André 86, 87, 110 Eastman, Brad 212, 228, 229, 233 Easton, Burton Scott 182, 193, 297, 304, 312 Eckert, Jost 290, 295, 296 Ellicott, Charles J. 299, 301, 302, 312 Elliott, Mark Adam 19, 21, 248, 249, 378, 383 Elliott, Neil 197, 198, 233 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 289, 296 Engberg-Pedersen, Troels 53, 83, 85, 96, 97, 100, 104, 106, 110 Engnell, Ivan 46, 49 Eskola, Timo 211, 214, 224, 233, 241, 243, 248, 249 Falconer, Sir Robert 304, 310, 312 Fee, Gordon D. 391, 393, 396 Finsterbusch, Karin 257, 264 Fiore, Benjamin 102, 110 Fitzmyer, Joseph A. 251, 264, 274, 286, 357, 364, 367, 393, 396 Freund, Paul A. 149, 161 Friedrich, Gerhard 279, 286, 408 Furnish, Victor Paul 332, 336 Galilei, Galileo 410, 411 Gammie, John G. 101, 102, 110 Garlington, Don 206, 207, 233 Gaston, Lloyd 198, 199, 233 Gathercole, Simon J. 58, 62, 76, 83, 364, 367 Gerhardsson, Birger 2, 21, 136, 144, 164, 166, 167, 168, 177, 178, 182, 183, 185, 191, 192, 193, 289, 294, 296, 306, 312, 332, 336, 365, 366, 367, 369 Goodenough, Erwin Ramsdell 305, 312 Gordon, T. David 277, 286 Gowan, Donald E. 68, 83 Grant, Robert M. 316, 336 Guelich, Robert A. 158, 161

Gunkel, Hermann 180, 193 Guthrie, Donald 311, 312 Haber, Susan 389, 395, 396 Hadas, Moses 86, 110 Hahn, Ferdinand 269, 286 Hanson, Anthony Tyrrell 297, 312 Hartman, Lars 177, 178 Haufe, G. 300, 312 Headlam, Arthur C. 272, 287, 394, 396 Hengel, Martin 62, 83, 166, 167, 172, 178 Herford, R. Travers 41, 42, 44, 49 Hillert, Sven 351, 352 Himmelfarb, Martha 36 Hofius, Otfried 279, 287 Holmberg, Bengt 334, 336, 369, 370, 376, 383, 389, 396 Holtz, Traugott 275, 287 Hooker, Morna D. 165, 178 Horrell, David G. 376, 383, 389, 396 Horsley, Richard A. 36, 358, 367 Hort, Fenton John Anthony 298, 300, 312 Houlden, J. L. 298, 312 Hübner, Hans 289, 292, 296, 319, 336 Hultgren, Arland J. 266, 285, 287, 351, 352 Humphreys, Alfred Edward 301, 312 Huther, Johann Eduard 301, 302, 304, 312 Jensen, Joseph 45, 46, 49 Jervis, L. Ann 266, 287 Johnson, E. Elizabeth 271, 278, 281, 287 Jones, J. Walter 150, 161 Kamlah, Ehrhard 316, 336 Käsemann, Ernst 155, 161, 315, 317, 318, 319, 320, 323, 325, 336 Kazen, Thomas 389, 396 Kelly, J. N. D. 297, 304, 312 Kennedy, George A. 88, 110 Kidd, I. G. 309, 312 Kim, Seyoon 212, 229, 234 Klauck, Hans-Josef 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 110 Klausner, Joseph 155, 161 Klawans, Jonathan 394, 396 Knox, John 7, 21 Koch, Klaus 266, 287 Kruse, Colin G. 212, 226, 234 Kruse, H. 271, 287 Kümmel, Werner Georg 157, 161, 319, 325, 336, 377, 383



Author Index

Kuula, Kari 201, 224, 234, 240, 241, 246, 248, 249 Laato, Timo 51, 52, 53, 83, 212, 218, 224, 231, 234, 241, 242, 243, 247, 249, 280, 287, 380, 383 Lapide, Pinchas 44, 50, 51, 83 Leaney, A. R. C. 297, 312 Lemcio, Eugene 164, 178, 182, 193, 266, 287 Levenson, Jon D. 36 Lewis, C. S. 355, 358, 364, 368 Liebers, Reinhold 201, 234 Lightfoot, J. B. 299, 300, 312 Lindars, Barnabas 46, 48, 50 Lindeskog, Gösta 167, 178, 186, 189, 193 Linton, Olof 324, 331, 333, 336 Lockett, Darian R. 389, 396 Longenecker, Bruce W. 207, 211, 234, 269, 287, 378, 383, 392, 396 Longenecker, Richard N. 327, 336 Louw, J. P. 44, 45, 50 Luther, Martin 10, 19, 20, 215, 221, 231, 232, 238, 340, 341, 352, 398, 401–403, 404, 406, 409, 410, 411 Luz, Ulrich 134, 141, 144, 164, 165, 169, 170, 172, 174, 175, 176, 178, 252, 264, 293, 296 Malherbe, Abraham J. 96, 104, 110, 182, 193 Manson, T. W. 181, 193 Manson, William 168, 178, 190, 193 Marcus, Joel 165, 172, 178 Marshall, I. Howard 188, 193 McEleney, Neil J. 304, 312 Meinertz, Max 297, 312 Michel, Otto 317, 336 Moloney, Francis J. 177, 178 Monsengwo Pasinya, Laurent 46, 50 Montefiore, Claude G. 42, 51, 62, 83, 242, 250, 346, 352 Moo, Douglas J. 278, 287 Moore, George Foot 386, 396 Moule, Charles Francis Digby 164, 178, 216, 297, 310, 312, 327, 330, 336 Munck, Johannes 270, 287 Nauck, Wolfgang 97, 111 Neusner, Jacob 149, 161 Nickelsburg, George W. E. 36, 70, 71, 83, 386, 396

445

Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm 94, 111, 195, 234, 370, 383 Norden, Eduard 86, 111 O’Donovan, Oliver 274, 287 O’Hagan, Angelo 87, 111 Oliver, James Henry 150, 161 O’Neill, J. C. 251, 264 Pancaro, Severino 128 Parkes, James 41, 43, 50 Parry, Reginald St. John 297, 299, 312 Pelikan, Jaroslav 404, 411 Perdue, Leo G. 96, 99, 102, 111 Pettem, Michael 128 Phillips, Justin 355, 368 Piper, John 154, 162 Plummer, Alfred 328, 336 Pohlenz, Max 309, 312 Popkes, Wiard 94, 99, 102, 111 Prat, Ferdinand 316, 336 Räisänen, Heikki 56, 83, 128, 195, 201, 211, 212, 224, 234, 238, 239, 240, 241, 246, 250, 269, 274, 282, 283, 287, 289, 291, 292, 293, 295, 296, 351, 352, 364, 368, 408 Renaud, Bernard 146, 162 Renehan, Robert 87, 89, 111 Rhyne, C. Thomas 281, 287 Riesner, Rainer 181, 183, 193 Robert, A. 46, 47, 50 Roloff, Jürgen 164, 178, 182, 193 Rudolph, David 10, 21 Runesson, Anders 370, 383 Sanday, William 272, 287, 394, 396 Sanders, E. P. 11, 12, 16, 21, 37, 51, 52, 53, 56, 61, 68, 69, 70, 79, 80, 83, 126, 149, 162, 181, 182, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 216, 218, 219, 221, 224, 225, 228, 229, 231, 234, 237, 238, 240, 241, 242, 243, 246, 247, 248, 250, 251, 264, 269, 281, 285, 287, 289, 290, 292, 294, 296, 346, 347, 352, 369, 373, 374, 376, 378, 382, 384, 389, 392, 396 Sanders, Jack T. 37 Sandmel, Samuel 41, 43, 48, 50, 62, 83 Schechter, Solomon 29, 37, 39, 40, 41, 46, 49, 50 Schiffman, Lawrence H. 37

446

Author Index

Schnabel, Eckhard J. 257, 264 Schneider, Bernardin 316, 336 Schoeps, Hans Joachim 18, 21, 43, 44, 50, 51, 83, 159, 160, 162 Schweitzer, Albert 342, 352, 375, 384, 389, 396 Scott, Ernest Findlay 297, 299, 304, 310, 312 Schrage, Wolfgang 319, 333, 336 Schreiner, Thomas R. 128, 211, 215, 216, 217, 234 Schürer, Emil 147, 162 Seifrid, Mark A. 128, 212, 221, 222, 223, 230, 233, 234, 253, 264, 266, 287 344, 354 Shuster, Margaret 388, 396 Skehan, Patrick W. 68, 83 Smiles, Vincent M. 212, 228, 234 Smith, D. Moody 177, 178 Smith, Louise Pettibone 46, 47, 50 Southall, David J. 342, 352 Spicq, C. 297, 299, 312 Stanton, Graham N. 164, 174, 178, 182, 193 Starr, James M. 94, 99, 111 Stein, Robert 182, 193 Stendahl, Krister 200, 246, 250, 260, 264, 346, 352 Stern, Menahem 147, 162 Stone, Michael Edward 71, 72, 83 Stowers, Stanley K. 106, 111, 199, 234 Strecker, Georg 158, 162 Strömberg Krantz, Eva 397, 411 Stuhlmacher, Peter 128, 195, 212, 217, 218, 234 Syreeni, Kari 128 Taylor, Vincent 179, 180, 181, 193 Tcherikover, Victor 146, 162

Theissen, Gerd 183, 184, 185, 193 Thielman, Frank 128, 211, 213, 234, 268, 284, 287, 347, 352, 378, 384 Thiselton, Anthony C. 391, 396 Thurén, Lauri 103, 104, 111, 212, 224, 225, 235, 244, 245, 246, 247, 250 Tomson, Peter J. 376, 384, 390, 396 Trilling, Wolfgang 293, 296 Tuckett, Christopher M. 182, 194 Urbach, Ephraim E. 48, 49, 50, 147, 152, 162 Vaux, Roland de 150, 151, 162 Viviano, Benedict Thomas 37 von Soden, Hermann 303, 312 Vos, J. S. 282, 288 Watson, Francis 53, 61, 67, 69, 80, 84, 128, 200, 209, 235, 272, 288 Webster, John 390, 396 Weiss, Bernard 299, 313 Weiss, Johannes 332, 336 Wendland, Heinz-Dietrich 331, 336 Wetzel, James 367, 368 Whiteley, D. E. H. 363, 368 Wilckens, Ulrich 270, 288, 324, 336 Williams, Sam K. 348, 353 Wilson, Stephen G. 128, 299, 301, 303, 313 Winninge, Mikael 53, 58, 84, 201, 212, 235, 260, 264, 346, 353, 380, 384, 388, 396 Winston, David 68, 84 Wrede, William 60, 84 Wright, N. T. 203, 204, 207, 211, 235, 281, 288, 342, 345, 353 Yinger, Kent L. 210, 235

Index of Selected Topics Adam and Eve 8, 51, 57, 59, 60, 63, 64, 66, 71, 72, 75–76, 81, 203, 218, 222, 223, 242, 262, 262, 350, 351, 377, 378 circumcision 10, 56–57, 75, 119–121, 124, 138, 141, 257–258, 262, 321–323, 327, 370–371, 374, 376, 379 cross, crucifixion 61, 80, 124, 137, 171, 175, 215, 223, 224, 228, 232, 242, 260, 347, 350 Dead Sea Scrolls – free will and determinism 77–79, 81 – sectarianism 28, 30–35, 148 – study of Torah 35–36, 82 Divorce – early Judaism 1, 33 – Jesus 5, 6, 114, 116, 118, 154–156 grace – in early Judaism 72, 196, 201, 203, 204, 211, 225, 231, 237, 247 – in Jesus 137–138, 144 – in Paul 59, 60, 143, 206–208, 212, 215–217, 225, 228–229, 231–232, 245–246, 262, 278–280, 304 Jesus – discipleship 5–7, 115, 137, 170–172, 176–177 – love commandment 114, 117, 118, 137, 141, 160 – message of kingdom 3–7, 114, 129–132, 137, 337–338 – parables 2–3 – Pharisees 116–118, 154–161 – ritual purity 6, 114, 116–119, 133–134, 136, 157–158 – Sabbath 4, 6, 114–116, 158 – Sermon on the Mount 4–7, 142 – Torah / law of Moses 4–7, 114–120 – transmission of tradition 2–3, 167–168, 179–194

Judaism, Early – anthropological “optimism” or “pessimism”? 63–84 – “Enochic” Judaism 28, 62, 64, 70 – free will 30, 64, 67–68, 71–73 – halakhah 1, 6 – Hellenistic and Palestinian Judaism 42–43, 48–49, 62 – importance of Torah 1, 23–37 Paraenesis – definition 85, 94–96, 98, 102–103 – in 4 Maccabees 96–105 – in Paul 106–110, 334–335 Paul – anthropological “pessimism” 51–52, 55–63, 79–80, 201, 218–219, 242–243, 260, 346–347, 376–379, 387–388 – Calvin, as interpreter of Paul 16–19, 403–410 – covenant 18–19, 58–59, 121, 329, 379–381 – ethics, Christian 17–18, 123, 142, 284–285, 330–335, 400–401 – evil “powers” 60–62 – Israel 268–276, 382–383, 392–393 – Judaism 8–16, 369–384 – law of Moses – freedom from the law 11–14, 17–18, 120–121, 123, 330–332, 375–376 – “fulfillment” of the law 289–298, 332 – law and the Gentiles 55–56, 107, 122 –  natural law/law and the “good” 12, 17–18, 54–55, 257–258, 355–368 – period of validity 8, 138–139 – righteousness of the law 12, 121, 122, 231, 255–260, 280–281, 373–375 – weakness of the law 8, 122–123, 139, 381–382 – Luther, as interpreter of Paul 19–20, 232, 401–403, 409–410

448

Index of Selected Topics

– new perspective 12–13, 195–235, 237–250 – Pastoral Epistles and Paul 297–313 – righteousness by faith 12, 59–60, 121, 123, 141, 220–221, 261–264, 341–349 – sin and sinfulness 57–58, 60–61, 198, 222 Pharisees 31–34, 148–153 righteousness, meaning of 252–255, 342–346

Sabbath 1, 32, 73 Torah/Law of Moses in Judaism – as community law 23–26. 145–148. 155 – as law of nature 25, 26–28, 356–358 – commandments as “statutes” 1, 149, 155–156, 159 – meaning of “Torah” 39–50 – relation to covenant 28–31 – study of Torah 35–36