Source: “PAUL WITHIN JUDAISM: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle”, Fortress Press 2016.
The Question Of Terminology Contempory Discussions On Paul.wav
This podcast argues for a re-evaluation of the terminology used in New Testament scholarship, particularly concerning the apostle Paul. The author contends that terms like "Christian," "Christianity," and "church" are anachronistic and misleading when applied to the first-century context, as they impose modern religious distinctions onto an ancient world where such clear-cut separations between "Jews" and "Christians" did not yet exist. The podcast emphasizes that our contemporary language colonizes the past, preventing a true understanding of historical phenomena and instead reinforcing modern identity politics. Instead, the author proposes viewing Paul and his followers as part of a diverse "Apostolic Judaism," advocating for a terminological shift that aligns more accurately with the historical realities of the time.
Topic 1 The question of terminology is a crucial issue in historical studies, particularly when dealing with texts that hold religious authority today. Scholars are increasingly recognizing the need to re-evaluate and, in some cases, retire existing terms that no longer accurately reflect the nuances of the first-century Mediterranean world. Terms like "Christians," "Christianity," and "church" are highlighted as politically powerful, inadequate, anachronistic, and misleading when applied to Paul and his era. These terms often serve contemporary needs for forming religious identities rather than aiding in the precise description of historical Jewish and Greco-Roman society. The political implications of translation, as seen in various scholarly works, underscore the urgency of addressing this terminological challenge, especially as it relates to understanding figures like Paul and concepts such as "Jewish-Christianity."
Topic 2 Historical research, much like a traveler's journey into unknown lands, is inherently prone to a process of "translation" that can distort the past. When encountering new historical landscapes, human perception instinctively accommodates the unfamiliar within its pre-existing worldview, making it challenging to experience anything as truly "new" or "other." This "spontaneous hermeneutical mechanism" means that genuine new insights are not simply discovered but must be actively disentangled from our familiar mindsets and concepts. This unconscious process of "othering" effectively constructs the past in our own image, behaving in a "colonial" manner by structuring and giving form to historical phenomena based on our contemporary perspectives. To achieve authentic understanding, historians must consciously resist these natural tendencies and cultivate a willingness to "de-familiarize" themselves with the past.
Topic 3 Overcoming our inherent biases and the tendency to "colonize" the past requires a conscious methodological approach rooted in "de-familiarization." This involves refusing to let our familiar concepts control and categorize what we encounter in historical texts. While voluntary alienation and detachment can be particularly difficult when engaging with religiously authoritative texts, this mental process is fundamental to the humanities and social sciences. It necessitates "radical listening" to voices from the past, spoken in languages and originating from worlds that are not our own, to prevent the neutralization of their radical otherness. The ultimate goal is to liberate the dead from the constraints of our contemporary political identities, recognizing that historical reconstruction is an ongoing, lifelong process involving both methodological rigor and ethical decisions. The choice of terminology is a fundamental ethical decision because the words we use inherently control the way we think and shape our analytical tasks.
Topic 4 Language, including scholarly terms and concepts, functions much like architectural structures. Just as an edifice influences our perception of reality and reconfigures our vision within its enclosed space, so too do terminological frameworks construct the "space" within which scholarly discussions take place. These "terminological edifices" are built slowly over time and are resistant to change. Consequently, outdated scholarly ideas can continue to influence current discourses because many scholars still operate within the conceptual boundaries established by these inherited terms. Therefore, it is crucial not only to re-evaluate the conclusions drawn in scholarship but also to critically examine and potentially restructure the "architecture" of the language itself. The very questions we ask are shaped by the "room" that our language creates, meaning that our conclusions are often predetermined by the terminology we employ, even unconsciously.
Topic 5 The widespread scholarly convention of studying earliest "Christianity" and "Christians" in relation to the New Testament, particularly Paul, is fundamentally problematic. This terminology establishes an immediate and firm link between the modern phenomenon of mainstream (non-Jewish) Christianity and what was occurring in Paul's time, effectively framing the discussion from the outset. Crucially, the terms "Christianity" and "Christian" are anachronistic from an "emic" (insider) perspective; Paul himself never used these terms, nor did his contemporaries define themselves by them. The term "christianismos" is absent from the New Testament, and "Christianos" appears only three times, all in texts post-dating Paul. If these terms are used, they must be from an "etic" (outsider) perspective, requiring careful consideration of what "Christianity" signifies today and whether those meanings can be legitimately transferred to ancient discourses. This modern usage imposes contemporary concepts and assumptions onto a historical context where they did not exist.
Topic 6 A significant issue with applying the term "Christianity" to the first century is that it imports the modern concept of "religion," which did not exist in antiquity as a distinct category in the same way it does today. When we use "Christianity" to describe what happened in Paul's letters, we anachronistically impose our twenty-first-century Western discursive habits onto the ancient world. This forces ancient concerns about the divine into a framework that did not exist at the time, effectively creating the "other" in our own image. This colonial practice distorts the historical understanding of the texts, making them behave as if they shared modern concerns rather than ancient ones. The assumption that "religion" was a separate domain of life in the same way it is understood today is a major source of historical inaccuracy when analyzing early followers of Jesus.
Topic 7 The use of "Christianity" in relation to Paul inevitably triggers a chain reaction in understanding other phenomena, particularly "Judaism." Modern habits instinctively define "Christianity" as not "Judaism," and vice versa. This imposes an anachronistic idea of distinct and separate religious entities onto the first century, where such clear-cut divisions did not exist. This pre-analytical assumption leads to the predetermined "conclusion" that Paul was a "Christian," leaving only the interpretive details of what "kind" of Christian he was to be debated. This terminological predisposition means that the "conclusion" is embedded within the "point of departure" of the research question, delivering an unsurprising outcome. This inherent tension, created by the very terms used, often leaves scholars with a sense of unease because the historical texts themselves resist this imposed framework.
Topic 8 Translating the Greek term ekklesia as "church" in English translations of the New Testament, especially Paul's letters, is also historically inappropriate and misleading. While ekklesia in the first century referred to various assemblies, including Jewish synagogue institutions (where it translated the Hebrew qahal) and Greco-Roman public assemblies, the modern English word "church" carries specific connotations of a non-Jewish Christian religious institution, often with a building and a state-recognized denomination. Paul and his contemporaries would have understood ekklesia in civic or non-civic (but not exclusively "religious") contexts, intertwined with a Jewish institutional identity within a broader Greco-Roman institutional culture. Translating it as "church" conjures a modern, non-civic, non-political, and distinctly non-Jewish institutional identity, which was not the reality in the first century. Paul's use of ekklesia likely indicated an understanding rooted in Jewish communal practices, suggesting that non-Jewish followers of Jesus were invited to participate in specific Jewish institutional settings rather than forming entirely new, separate entities.
Topic 9 A more historically plausible approach to understanding Paul and his self-identification is to consider him "Paul the Jew," practicing a specific form of "Judaism," rather than "Paul the Christian." This perspective acknowledges that Paul's activities were fundamentally within the diverse spectrum of first-century Judaism, rather than a distinct, separate "Christianity." The concept of "Judaism" as an ethnos (people) intertwined with land, law, and God, has largely maintained its basic characteristics since before Paul's time, unlike "Christianity" which began to take a separate form only in the second century. To capture both Paul's general belonging within Judaism and his specific affiliation, terms like "Apostolic Judaism" have been proposed. This term aims to describe the early Jesus movement, including Paul and his communities, as one among various forms of Judaism (like Pharisaic, Essene, Sadducean, or later Rabbinic Judaism) that incorporated Jesus as a central figure for understanding adherence to Judaism. This reframing suggests Paul's mission included the incorporation of non-Jews qua non-Jews into a specific Jewish framework.
Topic 10 Modern Bible translations, notably the NRSV, significantly contribute to the anachronistic separation between "Jews" and "Christians" and their respective institutions. The NRSV's interpretive strategy of translating ekklesia almost exclusively as "church" and synagōge as "synagogue" (only when referring to non-Jesus-follower institutions) actively constructs an impression of two distinct and oppositional institutional contexts. For example, in James, where the Greek synagōge is used for a gathering of Jesus-followers, the NRSV inexplicably translates it as "assembly" to avoid calling it a "synagogue," while simultaneously translating ekklesia as "church" in a nearby passage. This "politics of separation" is not driven by the ancient sources themselves, where terminological overlap between Jesus-followers and other Jews existed, but rather by modern theological biases. This ingrained ideology, particularly influential given English's role as a primary research language, means that generations of Bible readers unconsciously internalize modern religious identity politics as if they were first-century realities, making it challenging to introduce more historically accurate understandings of overlapping identities and institutions.