Source: “Reading Paul Within Judaism: The Collected Essays”, By Mark D. Nanos, 2017.
How Christian Approaches To Pauls Rhetoric.wav
This podcast explores how contemporary Christian interpretations of Paul's writings, even those intending to avoid anti-Jewish sentiment, can unintentionally perpetuate negative valuations of Jewishness. The author argues that attempts to reframe Paul's disputes as "inter-Christian" conflicts (between different early Christian factions) rather than "Christian versus Jewish" often fail to eliminate anti-Jewish bias. This is because such readings frequently maintain a conceptual framework that privileges "non-Jewish Christianness" over "Jewishness," implicitly devaluing Jewish identity and practices, even those of Christ-believing Jews. The article suggests that consistently approaching Paul's rhetoric through an "intra-Jewish" lens, recognizing the Jewish context of early Christ-believers, offers a more effective way to avoid these harmful interpretations.
Topic 1: The Persistence of Negative Valuations of Jewishness Despite significant improvements and conscious efforts in Pauline studies to avoid anti-Jewish sentiments, particularly in light of the Shoah, negative evaluations of Jewishness continue to arise in the interpretation of Paul’s texts. This includes negative assessments of Jewish identity, ideas, motives, and behavior associated with Jewish people and religious life. The core issue highlighted is how these problematic judgments persist even in the work of scholars who explicitly aim to eliminate traditional anti-Jewish rhetoric. This ongoing issue undermines the broader goal of fostering positive Jewish-Christian relations and accurate historical understanding.
Topic 2: Critique of the "Inter-Christian" Interpretive Model A common approach in Pauline studies is to interpret Paul's letters as addressing an "inter-mural Christian" dispute, meaning a conflict between different groups of Christ-believers (e.g., "Pauline" versus "Jewish" Christians). While proponents claim this approach "cuts the nerve of much of the charge of anti-Judaism laid against Paul," the sources argue it has largely been disappointing. This model often fails because it is not consistently applied and tends to privilege positively valued non-Jewish Christianness over negatively valued Jewishness. Historically, this model, as seen in the work of F. C. Baur, did not prevent intensely anti-Jewish rhetoric and sometimes even provided a framework to express negative assessments of non-Christian Judaism, demonstrating its inherent limitations in achieving its stated goal.
Topic 3: The Author's Proposed "Intra-Jewish" Interpretive Model The sources advocate for a shift from "inter-Christian" to "inter/intra-Jewish" models for interpreting Paul's texts. The author initially found the inter-Christian model appealing but, through extensive exegesis of Galatians, came to believe that Paul's rhetoric is better understood as intra-Jewish. This perspective suggests that Paul and other early believers in Jesus were Jewish and saw themselves as a Jewish subgroup engaged in a temporary task on behalf of Israel, not founding a new religion. The dispute, in this view, was not about whether Jewish norms (like Torah) applied, but how they applied to the new reality claimed by Paul's groups, especially concerning the inclusion of non-Jews. This framework is seen as having a better chance of yielding positive ideological benefits and consistently recognizing the Jewish context of the early Christ-believers.
Topic 4: Analysis of J. Louis Martyn's Commentary on Galatians J. Louis Martyn's commentary on Galatians is presented as a significant contemporary example of the persistent problem. Despite Martyn's explicit intention to demonstrate that Paul's text has no "anti-Judaic intention," his interpretation is critiqued for logically leading to negative valuations of Jewishness. Martyn posits that the primary polarity in Galatians is "God's apocalyptic act in Christ versus religion," defining religion as a "human enterprise" and effectively arguing that Paul's polemic is internal to the church, against "Jewish Christians," not non-Christian Jews. However, the author argues that Martyn's framework still implies a negative view of Judaism.
Topic 5: The "A Fortiori" Inference in Perpetuating Anti-Jewishness A crucial problem identified is the "a fortiori" (meaning "all the more") inference, which arises from the inter-Christian approach. This approach, by granting itself permission to express uninhibited negative evaluations of Christ-believing Jewishness, logically extends those negative assessments to non-Christ-believing Judaism, even if this extension is not explicitly stated or consciously recognized by the interpreter. If Jewishness is negatively valued even when it is expressed within a Christ-believing context, it is implicitly, and often more strongly, negatively valued when it exists outside that context, thus perpetuating anti-Jewish sentiments.
Topic 6: Martyn's "Apocalyptic vs. Religion" Dichotomy and its Implications Martyn's central interpretive move in Galatians is to establish an "apocalyptic" versus "religion" dichotomy. He defines "religion" negatively as a human attempt to relate to God, in contrast to God's "apocalyptic" invasive act in Christ. He asserts that Paul is not engaged in religious activity but is challenging "the emergence of religion within the church." While Martyn claims this avoids anti-Judaism by making it an internal church issue, the sources argue that this framework, by reserving true revelation only for the Christian church and equating other practices (like Sinai) with mere "religion," inherently devalues Jewishness. This effectively denies the claim to revelation that is central to Judaism.
Topic 7: Contradictions and Inconsistencies in Martyn's Argumentation The sources highlight specific points where Martyn's exegesis appears to contradict his stated intentions to avoid anti-Judaism. For instance, while claiming Galatians contains no "theory of the Jews" and Judaism lies "beyond the letter's horizon," Martyn later admits that Paul "speaks directly and explicitly and repeatedly about Judaism as a religion" in passages like Galatians 1:13-14, defining it in antinomy with revelation. Furthermore, Martyn's interpretation of Paul's call for the Galatians to imitate him (4:12), by regarding themselves as "former Jews," is seen as problematic since, according to Martyn's own premise, there were no Jews among the addressees. This suggests a shared negative valuation of Jewishness is assumed for the audience to understand Christian identity, echoing a negative legacy of anti-Semitic labeling.
Topic 8: The Broader Historical and Ideological Problems of Traditional Frameworks The sources contend that many scholarly interpretations, even those adopting inter-Christian constructions, operate within a conceptualization of the world that positively values the Christian component (especially Pauline/non-Jewish Christianity) and negatively values Jewish or "other" components. This fundamental axis of differentiation between "non-Jewish" and "Jewish" is not truly overcome, even when the dispute is confined to a smaller "Christian" circle. Such frameworks, regardless of their scale, tend to mimic the disputes of traditional Christianity versus Judaism and implicitly assign negative value to Jewish norms, particularly when viewed from a perspective that posits the "positively valued step of faith in Jesus Christ" as a benchmark that non-Christ-believing Jews have not taken.
Topic 9: Recommendations for Breaking the Cycle of Negative Valuations To avoid perpetuating anti-Jewishness, several suggestions are offered. Firstly, interpreters must genuinely believe that Jewishness is not a negative value. If they attribute negative valuations to Paul, they should critically distance their own views from what is attributed to Paul. Secondly, scholars should acknowledge that past Pauline discourse was influenced by anti-Jewishness and strive to develop a new vocabulary and hypotheses that work independently of the language and ideas dominating the traditional exegetical tradition. Consistency within these new paradigms is crucial to prevent subverting their potential.
Topic 10: The Intra-Jewish Nature of Paul's Core Dispute From an intra-Jewish perspective, Paul's dispute did not revolve around whether Jewish norms applied, but how they applied to the new reality he claimed his groups represented. This includes the Jewish claim that the "age to come," promising the reconciliation of Israel and the nations, had begun in the present age. This meant that members of Israel and other nations could now worship God as one and as equals, without requiring proselyte conversion for non-Jews. This interpretation shifts the focus to a christological one – what difference belief in Jesus Christ makes within a Jewish framework – rather than questioning the inherent value of Jewish identity or Torah. This approach fosters respect for difference and aligns with Paul's vision of Jews and non-Jews remaining distinct but equal in Christ, without discrimination.