by Dwight A. Pryor
IN OUR TIME a veritable revolution has occurred in Jesus studies.
Thanks in no small measure to Jewish scholarship in Israel, an impressive portrait has emerged of Jesus of Nazareth as a Torah-affirming Jewish sage who operated confidently within the vibrant matrix of Second Temple Jewish thought, drawing deeply upon the traditions and concepts of Judaism and the Hebrew scriptures. Increasingly these insights are being incorporated into the conceptual mainstream of the church, both Protestant and Catholic.
Would that the same could be said regarding the Apostle Paul! With few exceptions Jewish scholars and rabbis look upon him negatively—as a “convert” from Judaism to Christianity, forsaking Israel and his Jewish heritage, and insistently espousing an anti-Law polemic in his letters. Not coincidentally, this distorted image of “St. Paul” has been proffered by the Church since the fourth century, only to become more entrenched in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century.
Fortunately a serious reassessment of the “Protestant Paul” is presently underway by several evangelical scholars. And it is needed. Consider for example the traditional misrepresentations of Paul’s relationship with the Law and Judaism.
As a devout Pharisee, by his own testimony, Paul (Saul) had a zeal for the Torah, and was completely confident of his righteous standing with respect to it (Phil 3:5-6). Even after his encounter with the risen Lord, he continued to identify himself, in the present tense, as a Pharisee (Acts 23:6). He went out of his way to celebrate the Feasts (20:16), and insisted that the Torah was “spiritual” and the commandments, “holy, just and good” and that in which he delighted (7:12, 14, 22).
WE SHOULD NOT BE SURPRISED that Paul has been misunderstood and maligned through the centuries. It was so from the beginning! Even Peter commented that “there are some things in [Paul’s writings] hard to understand” (2 Pet 3:16). A comment by James also is telling.
In Acts 21:20, James reported to Paul that in Jerusalem many “thousands of Jews” had come to faith in Messiah and all continued to be “zealous for the Torah” (suggesting that Torah observance was normative for Jewish believers). They had heard (falsely) that Paul taught Jews to “forsake Moses and the customs” of Judaism, including circumcising their children (21:21).
James suggested a course of action to prove that this was a spurious charge, that Paul in fact did “live in observance of the Torah” (21:24). Paul complied with James’ recommendation, not out of compromise or duplicity, but because it was true—as a believer in Yeshua he continued in his calling as a Jew to keep the commandments of the Law and the customs of his people. On three other occasions (Acts 24:14; 25:8; 28:17) he testifies to this significant but oft neglected truth about himself.
Paul’s actions were consistent with his own “rule in all the churches” (1 Cor 7:17-20): namely, that Jewish believers should not “put on the foreskin” (remove their circumcision), nor must Gentile believers become circumcised. More than a physical act is implied here. “Circumcision” in the Second Temple period was a shorthand way of referring to the whole package of Jewish covenantal identity and obligations.
In other words, according to Paul’s rule, Gentile believers were not required to become proselytes to Judaism (“be circumcised”), nor were Jewish believers—like Paul himself—to abdicate their heritage of Torah obligations (“remove their circumcisions”). They each should remain in their respective callings (7:20).
This Pauline dictum is consistent with the Jerusalem Council’s famous “Apostolic Decree” of Acts 15—in which the Apostles and church leaders ruled that Gentile believers should not be ordered to be circumcised and to keep all the laws of Moses, i.e., treated as if they were proselytes to Judaism (15:5, 28-29).
What was not said at that historic Council, however, is equally important to note (as have scholars like Nanos and Wyschogrod). Never in the dispute was the issue raised about theJews present not keeping all the Torah’s commands or being released therefrom by virtue of their faith in Yeshua. It was an unchallenged assumption that Torah obligations were still in place for them, including Paul.
When Church councils in subsequent centuries formally forbade Jewish believers from living as Jews, and required them at baptism to renounce “every rite and observance of the Jewish religion,” they effectively banned Paul of Tarsus from membership! We all have suffered the consequences ever since.
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Want to study this subject in-depth? We recommend Reassessing Paul & The Protestant Paradigm.
Take me back to the library. Or if you prefer, back to the topic New Testament.