A Foray into Mark Nanos’ views on the “Torah-Observant Paul”

I just finished reading two essays written by Mark Nanos available on his website: A Torah-Observant Paul? and Rethinking the “Paul and Judaism” Paradigm. If you are unfamiliar with this work I wish to encourage you to read these two very interesting and no doubt controversial papers for a foray into his views.

If I were mapping out the movements in Pauline studies I would say that Mark, among others (and interestingly especially Messianic Jews: see David Rudolph’s forthcoming monograph from WUNT A Jew to Jews) is at the forefront of not a “New Perspective” (Dunn’s phrase for the Sanders revolution) or even a “Fresh Perspective” (Wright’s phrase for the anti-Imperial perspective of Horsley and others) but rather an “Ancient Perspective” on Paul (Paul as a Torah-Observant Jew) [I am sure that this phrase will not be coined, but hey it is the best I can do!].

I found the essays in need of some editing and revision. There are syntax problems here and there and the argument is at times difficult to follow with all of the parentheses and interruptions with dashes. In addition, the introduction to the paper A Torah-Observant Jew? was especially difficult and all the more for uninitiated. It felt like there were elliptical statements throughout that would be well served to spell out a bit more. Still these issues are not substantial and I am sure they will be revised before they are officially published pieces.

To reveal my hand slightly before discussing my view on Paul on a later post about Jewish Christianity, I will say that I am warmly sympathetic to his view of a Torah-Observant Paul. What’s more, I found myself in sympathy with many of his viewpoints in the essays. I was especially encouraged in my developing views on Paul by his perspective since I am not much more than a novice—perhaps unlike my co-blogger—when it comes to Pauline theology. I suppose one advantage I have had is that I am coming to Paul after spending a significant amount of time in the Gospels focusing on the Jewish background of Matthew. What Nanos states about Pauline interpreters—that is that while Paul gets touted as a Jew, the full weight of that assumption is often less than significant for the interpreters’ conclusions—I have said about Matthean scholars. For example, how can interpreters of Matthew so easily assume that a theology of Land has no remaining value for the Jewish author. I often think such things are so easy for non-Jews to say, although of course I myself am a non-Jew.

I want to interact with one point from his essays here that relates to Paul and Israel. On several occasions Nanos makes the point that Paul did not think non-Jews needed or even should be allowed to become members of “Israel” by proselyte conversion; in fact to do so, according to Nanos, would undermine Paul’s conviction that the end of the ages had dawned (you can read his discussion so I won't unpack this any further here). I agree in part with this assertion on one definition of the term “Israel”. In other words, I agree with Nanos that Paul differentiated between expectations for Jewish and non-Jewish believers in Jesus with respect to the Torah and asserted that non-Jews had equal standing, or were co-members with Jews as non-Jews and this was in fulfillment of eschatological expectations that Paul believed, in contrast to his compatriots, had arrived at least partially in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Still, I have been wondering these days about the term “Israel” especially Romans 9—11. What is the difference for Paul between the terms “Jew” and “Israelite” that surface in Romans? Why does Paul use the term Jew elsewhere in Romans, but in the context of Romans 9—11 he uses the term Israelite/Israel? Now most, as far as I can tell, see this change as one of election: who are the true chosen people? Most of course think Paul at best is saying that both Jew and non-Jew are now God’s chosen people and the election term “Israel” can be applied to both or at worst that the non-Jews have now taken ancient Israel’s place as God’s true Israel (quoting Paul “not all Israel is Israel”). Thus the meaning of the term “Israel” is thought to go back to the story of Jacob and his descendants. Indeed this view seems surely possible and perhaps even likely given that Paul references them in the context. Yet I question such a quick assumption when we come to Paul’s statement “all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11:26).

The term “Israel” is multivalent and can mean at least five different things: (1) a name of a person; (2) the name of the northern 10 tribal territories—in distinction from Judah; (3) the united kingdom under David and Solomon which included not only the 12 tribal territories, but also encompassed Gentile territories from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean Sea (cf. Davidic census in 2 Sam 24); (4) the Northern Kingdom in distinction from the Southern; and (5) the Judean returnees from the Babylonian captivity.

Isn’t it at least possible that when Paul says that "all Israel will be saved" he envisages the restoration of political-national Israel that included the restoration of the twelve-tribe kingdom of David and included non-Judeans and non-Israelites--that is those of the northern kingdom? Thus the term "Israel" as a political term can encompass at least three groups: Israelites, Judeans and those who are neither, but within the kingdom of Israel(=kingdom of David). It is true that Paul's understanding is more radical with respect to these "others" than the ancient prophets understood in that even in prophetic contexts where the other nations are envisaged as participating in the eschaton they did not have equal standing in the kingdom. This for Paul is the "mystery" (Rom 11; Eph 2-3) Paul has been given by God to proclaim: Jew and Gentile as equal members of the Messianic kingdom.

It is surprising to me that nobody is even considering this possibility given that the term can be applied in this way. This is all the more startling to me since many agree with Wright that Paul’s gospel to the nations is the royal proclamation of Jesus kingship as the Davidide. In this messianic context such an implication can’t be far away. While this is not so much an issue I have with Nanos, I think it could potentially strengthen his line of thinking. I would like at some point in the near future to pursue this line of thinking.

A High View of Scripture Part 5: Two Canon Lists

Returning to Allert's book A High View of Scripture, in chapter five he looks at two important fourth-century canon lists by Eusebius and Athanasius.

The fact that Eusebius could divided what are now our NT books into homologoumena (accepted) and antilegomena (disputed) categories in addition to his own doubts about the status of Revelation imply that the canon was still open and fluid at this point. Indeed, Eusebius refers to the "encovenanted" books as opposed to a canon of books.

On Athanasius' Festal Letter of 367, we have the first reference to the use of the term "canon" being used to describe a closed collection of writings. Athanasius does not have the three categories of Eusebius (homologoumena, antilegomena, notha) but he still knows of a third category of books (Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Judith, Tobit, Didache, Shepherd of Hermas) that are useful for instruction in godliness even if they are not part of the canon. If one takes Athanasius' Festal Letter and the Third Synod of Carthage in 397, then we have two instances from the East and West respectively that recognize what is now our canonical list of 27 books for the New Testament. Although these two lists have been influential on the wider church they were not unanimous. For instance, Revelation had a problem gaining canonical status in the East and Gregory of Nazianzus excluded from his list of canonical books. Didymus the Blind, who was appointed by Athanasius to be head of the catechetical school of Alexandria, regarded 2 Peter as a forgery. Amphilochius of Iconinum was a bishop in Asia Minor (d. after 394) and he rejected not only Revelation as "spurios" but also 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude. Allert cites Westcott who refers to no less than six different canon lists received in the Eastern churches. (I would add that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church includes Jubilees, 1 Enoch, and the Didascalia as part of its canon and in the past the Armenian Orthodox Church has held various views about 3 Corinthians).

Allert concludes: "The assertion that these documents forced their way into the canon by virtue of their unique inspiration has little historical support ... The Christian faith did not grow in response to a book but as a response to God's interaction with the community of faith. The Bible must be viewed as a product of the community becasue tradition of the community provide the context in which Scripture was produced" (p. 145).

This is all interesting stuff. I think it worth pondering how many canons there are out there and which books are in each one, e.g. 66 books in the Protestant canon, 73 in the Catholic Canon, and 81 in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's canon. Whose canon is the real canon and how do we know? I would want to say that it comes down to the "self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit" but I suspect that everyone will of course say that about their own canonical collection. Probably a better criteria is just to ask which books are accepted by the universal church.

A Forthcoming Paul Book

Above is the front cover for my forthcoming new book entitled: A Bird's-Eye View of Paul: The Man, his mission, and his message published by the excellent people at IVP. It should be available in a couple of months.

Michael Gorman has written a nice commendation:

"Michael Bird offers an insightful, readable, and serious (yet occasionally witty) introduction to Paul in conversation with the best scholarship on the apostle. It will be especially useful for those who think they know Paul well but have the courage to take a fresh look and have their assumptions challenged. Particularly important are Bird's discussions of justification and of the gospel itself. Let those who have ears to hear listen to what the Spirit--via Paul and Bird--is saying to the people of God in a world that seems increasingly similar to Paul's".

Update:

Here is a TOC as requested.

1. What is Paul?
2. A Funny Thing Happened on the Road to Damascus
3. The Stories behind the Story
4. Reading Somebody Else’s Mail
5. The Royal Announcement
6. The Crux of the Gospel
7. The Return of the King
8. One God, One Lord: Monotheism and the Messiah
9. Living a Life Worthy of the Gospel: The Ethics of Paul
10. Gospelizing 101: Paul’s Spirituality
11. Epilogue

Converting Muslims to Jesus with "Emotional Calvinism"

Over at CT, there is an excellent article on Jesus in Turkey which talks about the re-emergence of Christianity in Turkey since the 1960s. I loved this quote:

Ucal's congregation moved toward a charismatic, Vineyard-style form of Christianity. Meanwhile, Ucal served in the army for eight months and received training in ministry in the Philippines and South Korea. After that, Ucal decided to plant a different kind of church based on systematic theological teaching. While in South Korea, he had noticed the parallels between systematic theology and the disciplined Islamic lifestyle and mindset. He wondered if other Muslim-background Turks might respond to a more structured approach than the informal evangelicalism of which he was a part. Ucal found that his Muslim neighbors are attracted to systematic approaches to religious instruction, and are also easily touched emotionally. So Ucal began approaching them with an "emotional Calvinism."

Brief History of Jewish Christianity, Part Two: Peter and the Twelve (2.1.1.1)

This post is the first of three dealing with the subject of The Jerusalem and Galilean churches and the Jewish mission to Jews (2.1.1) under the larger topic of A Brief History of Jewish Christianity in Palestine and the Diaspora (2.1). The subjects of the posts will be Peter and the Twelve (2.1.1.1), James, the brother of Jesus (2.1.1.2) and Jesus’ other brothers (2.1.1.3)

Luke’s account of the early history of the Jewish believing community in Jerusalem contains a significant amount of ambiguity with respect to the development of the leadership structures of the community. Clearly at first the Twelve function as the center of the Jerusalem leadership with Peter as the chairperson and spokesman so to say. Their leadership can be seen in a number of passages in the first 12 chapters of Acts. Among them are:

(1) The fact that they felt it necessary to appoint a replacement for Judas (1:12-26)
(2) Peter’s Pentecost sermon (2:14-41)
(3) Peter and John’s arrest and appearance before the Sanhedrin (4:1-21)
(4) Annias and Sapphira episode (5:1-11)
(5) Arrest and jailing of apostles (NB: for Luke the “apostles and the “Twelve” are synonyms)(5:17-42)
(6) The Twelve’s appointment of the seven spirit-filled men for ministry (6:2-6)
(7) The apostles sending of Peter and John to Samaria (8:14-15)
(8) Peter and Cornelius’ conversion (10)
(9) Peter and James, the brother of John’s arrest (12)

Still as the narrative progresses through these chapters there are hints that the leadership is in process. First, mention is made of a wider group of leaders. We see this first in the reference in Acts 11:1 to the “Apostles and the brothers”; the later group not however a reference to the actual brothers of Jesus. Again in 11:22 a wider group (the “church at Jerusalem”) is said to have sent Barnabas to Anitoch. Also in chapter 11 the financial gift brought by Barnabas and Saul was given to the “elders”. This process seems to have ended by Acts 15 where James clearly has taken the preeminent role of leadership in the Jerusalem church; see also Acts 21:18. Note that Peter specifically signals him out in Acts 12:17 after his miraculous release from prison.

Second, if Peter is any indication of the function of the wider group of Twelve, then after they are said to have remained in Jerusalem subsequent to the onslaught of persecution (8:1), they appear to be involved in a wider missionary endeavor and marginal in the leadership structure in Jerusalem, although clearly not absent. Peter for example said to be travelling about the country (9:32) and was residing in Joppa in Acts 10. This observation of the missional function of the Twelve seems to confirm my suspicion that the Twelve’s appointment by Jesus had significant functional importance which although Matthew most explicitly emphasizes is clearly not absent in the other Gospels. Matthew’s unique introduction of the Twelve in contrast to Mark and Luke, suggests I think his understanding of the Twelve as having an emissary role. In Matthew’s view, and perhaps now confirmed historically in Acts’ portrait, the Twelve are called the twelve apostles (Matt 10:2) because they were sent by the Davidic King on the official duty of announcing the arrival of the Messianic Kingdom and dispensing the eschatological blessings of that kingdom.[1] Bauckham apparently concurs with this at least in part when he writes,

It seems likely that many members of the Twelve were no longer permanently resident in Jerusalem, as was certainly the case with Peter, while at least one had died (Acts 12:2), James stepped into the leadership gap. Any remaining members of the Twelve would have become members of the college of the elders with whom James presided over the church (Acts 21:18).[2]

While it is possible that some of the Twelve remained in Jerusalem as Bauckham’s last sentence suggests, it seems equally or even more likely to me that they had eventually all scattered on mission in fulfillment of their vocation. Furthermore, if Paul’s reference to the “division of apostolic labor” in Galatians 2:7-9 is correct (and there is no necessary reason to doubt its historical credibility), then it is conceivable that Peter and the Twelve’s primary mission field was the circumcised.

[1] Willitts 2007:119.
[2] Bauckham 2006:67.

Works Cited

Bauckham, Richard. 2006. James and the Jerusalem Community. In A History of Jewish Believers in Jesus: The First Five Centuries, ed. Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik:55-95. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

Willitts, Joel. 2007. Matthew's Messianic Shepherd-King: In Search of the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel. BNZW. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Paul Helm Interview

Thanks to Guy Davies for interviewing my HTC colleague Paul Helm in his Blogging in the Name of the Lord series.

Aussie Anglican Blogs

Continuing our theme of Anglican-Thursday, here's some Aussie Anglican Blogs:
Martin Foord's Blog by Martin Foord
Reflections in Exile by Mark Baddeley
The Blogging Parson by Michael Jensen
Aaron Ghiloni by Aaron Ghiloni
Faith and Theology by the now famous Ben Myers

New Blog: Sydney Anglican Heretics

Given that I'm in an Anglophile state of mind today, I have to say that I would not have believed it unless I saw it with my own eyes, but there is a blog out there entitled: Sydney Anglican Heretics and the subtitle reads: "A blog dedicated to exposing, discussing and, we pray, undoing the silly and heretical teachings that are slipping, almost unnoticed (we notice!), into the Anglican Diocese of Sydney". Views on creation seem to be the main issue here. Sadly Michael Jensen and Mark Baddeley, both whom I have had the pleasure of meeting, come in for some very unnice treatment. Ironically, in many circles the Sydney Anglicans are usually labelled fundamentalists, so the designation of "heretic" is rather comical all things considered. But to Mike and Mark remember the words of Churchill: "A man with no enemies is a man with no convictions!"

Let My People Go!

"Let My People Go!"
A sermon preached at the Anglican parish of St. Boschlavich at Watership on Down in Falkirk, Ayrshire the first Sunday after advent.
Guest post by Michel Vogel, Ret'd Vicar of St. Boschlavich.

Dear brothers and sisters, many of you may take joy in reading over the story of the Exodus which is now delightfully retold in movies like The Ten Commandments or The Prince of Egypt. It is a story that we are all know and are familiar with. One of the most powerful moments in the Exodus story is when Moses says to Pharoah, "Let my people Go!" (Exod. 5.1). This short statement is both plea and demand. Moses pleads and yet also demands that Pharoah set the Hebrews free from their malevolent oppression. It is rather like going up to Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and saying, "In God's name stop all of these human rights abused!" To go up to a national ruler, one hardly known for his compassion and benevolence, and to make such a demand takes audacity, courage, bravery, not a little faith, and oodles of testicular fortitude. Moses did it, though not with a little reluctance, and he was remembered in Judaism as the leader of captives, the law-giver, a wise-man, and even as a role model King (see esp. Philo of Alexandria).

The exodus story can be reapplied in a number of ways. It is taken up again in the books of Isaiah and Hosea who predict a new exodus and a new day of liberation for God's exiled people. The Gospels, most notably Mark, take up the exodus theme via Isaiah and declare that this hoped for day of salvation has now come in and through Jesus. Jesus proclaimed that the day of exile was ending and God was again gathering together a renewed Israel, for a renewed covenant, through a new passover sacrifice.

In recent days the Exodus story has been interpreted in a more contemporary fashion in the Anglican communion. For instance, Anglican Priest and Theologian Marilyn McCord Adams interprets the story as the quinessential coming-out party for gays and lesbians wanting to be free from oppression and to embrace their true sexual identity. Her sermons are always interesting and she is a very learned philosopher. While I appreciate the depth of her compassion for societal outcasts, I have to confess that I do not find her application of the story all that compelling. I cannot for the life of me see how one can take the biblical teaching about homosexuality to be anything other than negative and restrictive. A better strategy might be to say that the God of the Old Testament is a wicked demi-god, Paul was a homophobic bigot so who cares what he thinks, the church fathers were just a bunch of backward African hicks (like modern African Anglican leaders) to whom we should only pay lip service too, let's hope that Jesus never actually said alot of the things he is reported to have said about marriage, adultery, celibacy, and divorce, and instead let's just run with the UN Millennium goals and UN charter on Human Rights. Truth be told, I have alot more respect for that upfront repudiaton of the biblical teaching about sexuality than I do of some of the pseudo-exegesis that tries to convince the converted that homosexuality is now officially kosher. Let me qualify that: (1) All human beings regardless of gender or sexual preference bear the image of God and have inherent worth and value; (2) God does not have a special loathing for the sins of homosexuality, in fact, homosexuality is mentioned as one possible sin of many in Paul's vice lists; (3) Violence against homosexuals because they are homosexuals is abhorrent to all - evangelicals, moderates, or liberals; (4) Everybody is invited to my church, gays, lesbians, transgendered persons, Liberal Democrats, and even Celtic Supporters, and come as you are, but no one is allowed to stay as you are, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and we all urgently need the transforming work of the Holy Spirit to conform them to the image of the Son of God.

But let me find another application of the exodus story for our contemporary circumstance and one that includes making use of Moses' phrase, "Let my people Go". Many of our North American cousins in the Dioceses of San Joaquin, Pittsburgh, and Fortworth have decided that they have had enough of the Amercian Episcopal Church (TEC) in both its theological revisionism and in its persecution of orthodox Christians. Of course the powers-that-be of the TEC are not all that keen for them to escape (I mean "leave") and will take rigorous legal action against these dioceses in order to remove their duely elected bishops and to force these dioceses and all of their parishes to remain within the TEC. Call me idealistic if you wish, but I believe in the principle of freedom of association as a basic human right. And if a diocese in its democratic processes chooses to leave an organization due to its theological abberation they should darn well be allowed to do so. Separating from an organization that has ceased to be in any historic sense Christian is of course an even better reason and one can hardly blame these dioceses for wanting to "come out and be separate" (2 Cor. 6.17). I think the Presiding Bishop of the TEC needs to be told, "Let my people go!" Give these people the freedom they want, that they deserve, and need. The orthodox Anglicans are praying for a new exodus, a new found freedom, and a new day of liberation. We should join in prayer with them and pray for our Anglican leaders like Rowan Williams and Peter Akinola too that they will be able to shepherd God's people in this hour of division and disunity.

More thoughts on ETS

I enjoyed reading Mike's musings about Evangelicalism and specifically ETS. I have a few thoughts I'd like to share about ETS in response to Mike's post.

First, personally I have no desire to expend energy toward pursuing any whole scale change of ETS. What's more do not I think it in any way advantageous nor good stewardship of time to put forth effort toward such a goal. ETS was born in North America as an "alternative" academic society and is not going to be turned into something with the atmosphere of say British evangelicalism; it is not in the organizations DNA. Too many influential constiutents continue to think in terms of "liberal versus conservative" and come from very narrow frames of reference and they will not go quietly. I remember when I met with someone before going to Cambrigde and they cautioned me to be careful about . . . well you know . . . the boogy man!

So one has to take ETS for what it is or chose not to, as Ken Schenk (see comment on Mike's recent post) has. Both Mike and I choose, at least for now, to continue to be members of ETS and it is fair to say that there are many members that would be considered "progressive evangelicals", but still find it useful to continue to participate. Mostly I'm sure for the continued relationships that the small venue provides. But I can't fault anyone for not being a member even if they have evangelical leanings. All three of my colleagues at North Park are strongly evangelical, but I am the only one who continues to be affiliated with ETS.

In addition, and on a more practical level, I realize more than ever that making time to attend the annual meetings of both ETS and SBL is very difficult with a family and course load. To participate in both takes a week of life --in a very busy time of the year I might add--and this is very difficult to give. Moreover, since it is important to me to be active in the larger guild of New Testament studies I will always choose to if need be to miss ETS.

Evangelicalism and North America

Ben Witherington offers up a prayer for the New Year in which he decries much of Religion, Politics, and Evangelicalism in North America.

Generally speaking I like America and Americans. I believe in Democracy, free-market economics (with Govt. intervention like universal health care), and if it wasn't for the USA, Australia would have been invaded by Japan with grim consequences. Americans are fairly generous people and very friendly. Generally speaking I also like American Evangelicals. I count them among my closest friends. Sadly, they have the best and worst of everything: Billy Graham and Pat Robertson! But there is one joke about American Evangelicals that I have heard in numerous places: "Many American Christians will find the afterlife disappointing when they discover that heaven is not any where as glorious as America!"

I think Americans in general and Evangelicals in particular need to appreciate their place in the global scheme of things. For American Evangelicals that means appreciating that Evangelicalism is not identitical with American Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism is a global movement. The reason I say this is because some guys write and talk as if Evangelicalism is "us" and "us" is North American Evangelicals. A friend of mine recently reviewed a book where the author kept equating Evangelicals with Evangelical Christians in North America. Where does Africa, China, South Korea, or South America fit in?

I have always been struck by the fact that the Evangelical Theological Society should really be called the "American Evangelical Theological Society" since its doctrinal statement, program, and constitution are all focused on the USA. Let me say that given its constituency and location that this is understandable and there is no hostility or suspicion towards foreigners at annual meetings. In my estimation less than 5% of members are from outside of the USA (but I need to double check). The question I have is does ETS want to be the theological society for Evangelicals in North America or the theological society for Evangelicals of the world? If the latter, then it requires making changes. Let me suggest a few: (1) It should consider holding its meetings occasionaly outside of the USA or else adopting an "international meeting" once every year or every two years much in the same way that SBL does. (2) It should appoint an international member to the executive committee in order to voice international concerns to the committee (I don't want the job!). (3) There should perhaps be program units allocated to international issues like Evangelism, Theology, and Social Justice in Africa and the like which would hopefully go on in leaps and bounds from there. (4) Perhaps one of the plenary speakers should always be from outside the USA which I'm glad to say has happened in recent years with Chris Wright and Paul Trebilco. (5) While inerrancy is the centre of the theological galaxy for Conservative Evangelicals in the USA given the Bible-Wars of the 20th century, this is simply not the case in the rest of world. Therefore, why make "inerrancy" the central issue? It might be better to adopt a broader and more comprehensive statement of faith like the UCCF statement or give a range confessonional options like the Anglican 39 Articles, the 1689 London Baptist Confession, the Westminster Confession, the Helvetic Confession, or the Baptist Faith and Message (1962 or 2000). This would make the statement of faith options representative of the diversity of global Evangelicalism rather than focus on one issue that has been prominent in North America.

I suspect that it is this narrow focus on the theological context of North America and the inordinate concern with inerrancy which is why Tyndale House in the UK sees its American counterpart in the Institute for Biblical Research rather than with ETS (but I may be wrong on that and there might be other reasons for it). Note, I'm not trying to attack inerrancy, but what I'm saying is that this has not been the hill to die on in most parts of the world and other traditions have ways of explicating biblical authority and veracity which are not tied to the grammar and conception of inerrancy. ETS can either try to indigenize itself in other parts of the world, remain parochially American and invite others to join in, or else modify its doctrinal statement, programming, and structure to reflect the international nature of the world wide movement that is Evangelicalism. Some might respond and say that with so few international members is there any point in making these changes? Well, it might be the nature of ETS which is why there are so few international members, and changes could facilitate the globalization of ETS. Finally, let me reiterate that this is not an exercise in American bashing, I'm not out to vanquish inerrancy either, I merely want to point out that Evangelicalism is bigger (much bigger) than North America and ETS as the flagship organization of Evangelical Biblical, Theological, Pastoral, and Missiological scholarship should try to reflect that.

Robert Jewett on Rom. 2.13-16

In several places I have advocated the Gentile Christian reading of Rom. 2.13-16. I was glad then to read Bob Jewett's comments on this section:

"The Most likely of these views from a rhetorical point of view is that Paul is here describing the status of converted Gentiles. Having assented that wrath is already evident among unconverted Gentiles (1:18-31) and that Jews are not exempt from God's impartial judgment (2:1-13), the audience consisting mainly of converted Gentiles would assume that their current situation is described in these verses which provide a preliminary form of Paul's strategy of touting Gentile conversion in order to provoke Jewish conversion through jealousy (11:11-14). The alleged contradiction between these verses and chap. 3 is removed if one takes the latter as claiming that all unconverted Gentiles and Jews have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that salvation is by grace alone for Jews as well as Gentiles.

The gar ('for') of v. 14 indicates an argumentative connection with the foregoing thesis concerning the impartial judgment of God in v. 11. It is significant that Paul refers here to the ethne ('Gentiles') without the article implying that some but not all Gentiles are in view. The expression ta me nomon echonta ('those that do not have the law') refers to the absence of the Jewish Torah within the cultural tradition of Gentiles, whereby the word phusis should be taken as qualifying their identity rather than behavior. It refers to Gentiles whose birthright lacked exposure to the Torah. Yet they do the 'deeds of the law,' a claim that in the experience of the Roman audience could only have referred to converted Gentiles" (pp. 213-14).

Goals for 2008

My goals for 2008 are:

1. Recover from 2007
2. Think about publishing something
3. Blog regularly enough that my posts aren't assumed to be Mike's

Goals for 2008

My goals for 2008 are:

1. Pray more (Book of Common Prayer in the Morning and extemporaneous at night).
2. Take my wife Naomi to ETS/SBL Boston.
3. Finish all of my scheduled publications on time.
- 6 books
- 2 journal articles
- 1 essay
4. Do less book reviews (they are so time consuming)
5. Call my mother more.
6. Write a course on the Epistle to the Hebrews
7. Read through the entire NT in Greek during my devotionals
8. Re-take a course on biblical Hebrew
9. Keep improving my German
10. Play and pray with my two daughters every day

The New Perspective on Paul (ca. 1976-2006)

I am going to make the announcement that we are now formally living in the post-New Perspective era of Pauline studies. For me the boundary markers in this era are:

1. The publication of Krister Stendahl's Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (1976).
2. Robert Jewett's Romans in the Hermeneia series (2006).

Stendahl's collection of essays got people thinking beyond the compendium of Christian doctrine view of Romans and posited salvation-history (= Jew and Gentile relations) as the ovearching purpose of the letter. This of course paved the way for Sanders' contribution that Judaism was not legalistic who in turn paved the way for Dunn and Wright to argue that the problem was principally nationalism, and they in turn gave over to works by Gager and Stowers and others who in some senses radicalized the issues even further.

Jewett's commentary is a fine piece of work and is the standard for Romans commentaries that follow (I have been told that he received the contract for the volume in 1972!). Jewett's commentary is brilliant for its attention to historical detail, background, socio-cultural factors of honour/shame, and even paying attention to demographics and architecture in ancient Rome. Nonetheless, Jewett still thinks of Romans as concerned with the "transforming gospel about God's righteousness" (p. 2) geared towards garnering support for Paul's mission to the Barbarians of Spain and in hope of healing fractured relations among the Roman Christians themselves. He rightly thinks of 15.7-13 as providing a "coda" for the entire letter (p. 887). Jewett thus makes Jew-Gentile issues central to the content of the letter, but at several points he deliberately departs from "New Perspective" readings. For example, on Romans 4.1-5 Jewett writes: "Yet the antithesis between Paul's view of Abraham and that of Jewish religionists in his period cited above is sharply delineated by the wording of 4:2, and it fails to do justice to the explicit references to boasting and justification by works by substituting a politically correct emphasis on God's mercy ... the preceding sections of Paul's argument show that all human beings have fallen short in the glory required for boasting and that a new basis for righteousness has been created through Christ, so that boasting in any human accomplishment has been excluded by divine action" (p. 310).

I think Jewett's commentary is a sign that we are now living in a post-New Perspective era where the best insights from the NPP have been taken on board by the majority of scholars and some of its less compelling features have been rejected. Several scholars like Brendan Byrne, A. Andrew Das, and myself have been saying similar things for the last few years, I think we are now formally "Beyond" (not necessarily "against" or "more deeper" into") the New Perspective.

Brief History of Jewish Christianity in Palestine and the Diaspora, Part One: Jewish Christian History in the New Testament Period (2.1)

I wish to sketch out a brief history of Jewish believers in Jesus and more specifically Jewish Christians, whom we had defined as those who are ethnically Jewish and maintain a Jewish lifestyle (see point 1 the question of definition in the earlier posts). But it will not be my intention to provide a detailed account of the history of the Jewish believers in Jesus. Instead I wish to make several points that I think are important that arise from our sources, in the first instance the New Testament.

J. Carleton Paget is quite right to state “In the beginning all Christianity was Jewish Christianity”.[1] And even at the earliest stage there is evidence in Luke’s account that there were diverse groupings of Jewish Jesus-believers in Jerusalem, based especially on cultural background. Luke refers to what appears to be two main groups with the terms “Hebrews” (NIV: "Hebraic Jews") and “Hellenists” (NIV: "Grecian Jews") (Acts 6:1). These terms refer to the language and culture of the Jews in question. Those who were so-called “Hellentists” were Diaspora Israelites who had migrated back to Palestine in order to be in the Land and near the Temple. Presumably they were motivated by the desire to more wholly live a Torah-observant lifestyle. Whereas the Hebrews were native born Judeans and Aramaic speakers.[2]

In the history of scholarship on early Christian history since Baur, these two groups have been assumed to be the earliest expression of the ideological divide within Christianity between those who believed in a Torah-free Gospel and those who didn’t, the Hellenists representing the former group and the Hebrews the latter. However, there is no foundation for this viewpoint as Bauckham and others[3] have pointed out and what’s more it is likely that the Hellenists were even more zealous for the Torah than the Hebrews.

It is not recognized enough that Saul of Tarsus was a “Hellentist” since he was a Diaspora Jew born in Tarsus and his first language was likely Greek. His Diaspora Jewish background likely provides the appropriate context for understanding his zeal for both the “traditions of fathers” (Gal 1:14) and for the persecution of the church (Phil 3:6). What’s more it is certainly the reason (either his, his parents or both) for his move to Jerusalem as a young man and perhaps also his study under Gamaliel (Acts 22:3).

The implication of this first observation is that even at the earliest stage, when the only form of Christianity was Jewish Christianity, diversity existed. Later of course the diversity took a pronounced turn when the mission to the Gentiles got underway. At that point a new theological divide arose. It should be recognized that at the earliest stage the diversity was primarily cultural and did not have negative consequences of the later theological division. The problems between the groups seemed to be related to practical "pastoral care" issues--care of widows, etc. Moreover, this latter division did not form along cultural lines, but was the result of a difference in the interpretation of Torah and its application or non-application to Gentiles, a difference which it seems transcended issues of culture creating division even among Hebrews. Presumably the same is true for the Hellentistic Jews, although little evidence is either way is extant, save the Apostle Paul. There is no positive evidence that supports the oft-made claim that the Hellenists were primarily responsible for the Gentile mission after being scattered as a result of persecution (see Acts 8:1).

[1] Carleton-Paget 1999:742.
[2] Bauckham 2006:63.
[3] Bauckham 2006; Hill 1992.

Works Cited

Bauckham, Richard. 2006. James and the Jerusalem Community. In A History of Jewish Believers in Jesus: The First Five Centuries, ed. Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik:55-95. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

Carleton-Paget, James. 1999. Jewish Christianity. In The Cambridge History of Judaism: The Early Roman Period, ed. William Horbury, W. D. Davies and John Sturdy, 3:731-75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hill, Craig C. 1992. Hellenists and Hebrews: Reappraising Division within the Earliest Church. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Merry Christmas!

From Joel and myself we wish all the readers of Euangelion a very merry and blessed Christmas. We hope that for you this Christmas will be a time of pondering, praising, and proclaiming the Saviour's advent (Lk. 2.16-20).

The Ultimate Christmas Presents

My ultimate Christmas presents would have to be:

Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism by Menahem Stern.
Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum by J.B. Frey
Corpus Papyrorum Iudaicarum by V. Tcerikover and A. Fuks.

Why are all the best books out of print or too expensive!!! Does anyone know where to find these books?

New Blogs 20

A couple of other notable blogs that I have to mention are:

Gervatoshav by Dave Miller which has been having a cracking good discussion on the meaning of Ioudaismos in antiquity. I recently had Chris Stanley over at my house and we had an excellent discussion on this subject as well. While I think that "Judean" is a good default translation in terms of tying the word to ethnicity, I do think that it could also be used in a more general religious sense and can be translated rightly as "Jew" at times.

In Light of the Gospel is a blog by James Grant that covers elements of interest to evangelicalism.

Another blog I've been meaning to point out for a long time is The Westminster Bookstore Blog.

A Response to my esteemed colleague and co-blogger

Thanks to Michael for his longer response to my question and for recognizing not only my professorship, but also my ordination (which by they way he doesn't actually recognize!, since he doesn't believe in ordination).

While I in principle have no problem calling the phenomenon Judeo-Christianity as he suggests, I just don’t see what difference it makes. How does it provide any more clarity and sidestep the same pitfalls of the term “Jewish Christianity”. What’s more, the term “Judeo-Christian” is already used as a synonym for “Jewish Christianity” in current discussions—see the recent book entitled The Image of the Judaeo-Christians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature. I don’t think anything is gained by the term.

In addition, I have two further points in response to some of what Mike states. First we can all agree that the term "Jewish Christian/Christianity", and for that matter “Judeo-Christianity”, is a modern construct (not found in ancient literature) and is for many reasons an anachronistic designation for the reality of first-century Church (see Brant's comment below to my initial phrase "Jesus movement"). This is true not least for the decades of the middle to late first century when believers in Jesus were mostly of Jewish ethnicity on the one hand and Gentile God-Fears on the other who would have already been viewed as semi-Jewish. Therefore, we could define Jewish Christianity, and some have, as the Jewishness of early Christianity (see especially Daniélou's work).

Yet, since the time of Baur, Jewish Christianity has been variously defined and in the early days especially as the group who stood opposed to Paul's Gentile mission. This latter aspect for the most part has been jettisoned by recent scholarship, although some continue to propound it (e.g. David Sim). Nevertheless, what has essentially become the consensus is that the components of ethnicity and Jewish practice of certain kinds of believers in Jesus define Jewish Christian and not their perspective on Gentile Torah observance (see Mimouni). Of course on this question there was a wide spectrum of opinion.

Thus, in my view (and more on this in later posts) both Paul and his opponents (those who advocated Gentile conversion to Judaism), should be considered Jewish Christians—ethnically Jewish and practicing Torah (I am of the view that Paul didn’t cease his own halahakic observance in his mission to the Gentiles). On the law for Jews, Paul and the opponents seemed to have agreed. What distinguishes Paul’s type of Jewish Christianity, however, was not his view of the requirements for law observance on the part of Jews, but Gentile law observance. This issue was clearly a live question in the early church.

I prefer Skarsuane’s designation “Jewish believers in Jesus” to designate the ethnically Jewish believers in Jesus generally (including Jews who did and didn’t maintain a Jewish lifestyle) and “Jewish Christians” or Judeo-Christians as those who continue a Jewish lifestyle. See my discussion in an earlier post. Perhaps a further addition to Skarsaune's definition (and Mimouni's for that matter) may be to add that only were there differing Christologies among these groups, but also different perspectives on the status of Gentiles.

Second, I see no reason to wonder, as Mike does, who was more Jewish among the early Christian groups. What exact practices ethnic Jews who believed in Jesus preformed to my mind is not as important as observing who identified themselves (or were identified) as ethnically Jewish and were also recognized as such by particular Jewish communities at the time.

Jewish Christianity Definitions, Whence and Whither?

In response to a question from my buddy and co-blogger the Rev. Prof. Joel Willitts, I'm throwing up a few ideas as to why I don't like the term "Jewish Christianity".

First, at one level ALL Christianity in the first century, to some degree or other, is Jewish Christianity. Even those churches consisting mostly of Gentiles who do not generally observe the Torah still fall under the umbrella of Judaism as the parting of the ways is only in its germinal stages.
Second, and as we all know, defining the term "Jewish Christianity" is like nailing jelly to a wall given the nature of our sources (are Matthew and John Jewish Christian writings, if so, which is more Jewish?; is Gospel of the Nazoreans a rip off from Matthew?), the sociological issue of how to know if someone is in or out of the Jewish group, and pluriform views on adherence toTorah by ethnic Jews and ethnic Gentiles in the early church.
Third, Matt Jackson-McCabe writes: "If we designate 'Christ-believing Jews' those Christ-believing Jews who agree with Paul about the primary identity of Christ-believers and the central definition of the covenant community, then we may want to designate those who he opposes in Philippians and 'those from Jews' as Jewish Christ-believers. The latter expression would then indicate that their primary identity is Jewish; that is, they are most fundamentally faithful adherents to the Mosaic covenant. Their belief in Christ, then, functions within that sphere of identity. Our study indicates that there is so single way - or even two ways - of being a Christ-believer and Jewish in the first century. However Christ-believers understood the mission and work of Christ in relation to Israel and Gentiles varied significantly. There is enough variation among Christ-believing Jews that a single designation for them is misleading, particularly if that label's central function is to distinguish them from Paul or from the Pauline churches. Serious theological issues divided Paul from some other Christ-believers, but some times those on his own side would have been Jews and some times Gentiles and probably nearly always a mixture of the two" (pp. 77-78).
Fourth, I am not a fan of "Christian Judaism" since that sounds like Jewish Muslim or Liberal Evangelical. I think the title "Judeo-Christianity" is a better way of designating Christ-believing Jews who still find their identity (and therefore their praxis) as bound up with the Torah/Covenant while allowing for variation of how that worked itself out in reality.

New Blogs 19

My friend Peter Enns of Westminster Theological Seminary has started up his own blog called A time to tear down, A Time to Build Up which is set up to engage with the Bible and Contemporary Christian Faith. You can see a list of his publications here, which includes the controversial Inspiration and Incarnation (this is on my to-read shelf, his debates with Greg Beale in JETS and Themelios wet the appeitite). On the site I learnt that Peter is going to be a contributor with Walter Kaiser and Darrell Bock to a volume entitled: "Three Views on the New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament". Welcome to the blogosphere Peter.

While I'm at it I should add that Stephen Holmes of St. Andrews has also created his own blog called Shored Fragments. Stephen is an ordained Baptist Pastor, a lovely guy, and for a systematic theologian he actually has some intelligent things to say.

The Face Book World

I am proud to announce that today I entered the world of Face Book by creating a profile. What is amazing is that in just a day I have gained a bunch of friends. In fact it was incredible to watch throughout the day as I gained new friends almost hourly. This is certainly something to do if you are feeling down about yourself. Open a Face Book profile and watch the friends multiply.

On a serious note, it was good to connect with some people in various parts of the globe as they saw me on Face Book. One particular friend is James Palmer a true Cambridge-trained Englishman who is now teaching in at a seminary in Chile. Well done James!

Matthew and Judeo-Christianity

Thanks to Craig Allert, I came across an interesting example of how the text of the Gospel of Matthew was handled by Judeo-Christian groups (I prefer this term to "Jewish Christian").

Mt. 8.4: "Go, show yourself to the priest and present the offering which Moses commanded, as a testimony to them."

In Tatian's Diatessaron, we find the same verse written as: "Go, show yourself to the priest and fulfill the law".

Does this provide evidnence of the text of Matthew being taken in a pro-Torah and pro-Jewish direction by elements within Judeo-Christianity in the secondary century? It certainly appears that way. Ironically, Matthew was a document that enabled and activated both pro (e.g. Mt. 15.24) and anti (e.g. Mt. 27.25) Jewish sentiments.

Richard Bauckham's Jude and the Relatives of Jesus

I remember one afternoon while in Cambridge making my regular pilgrimage to Gallaway and Porter's book store in the city centre to hunt up second hand and over stock books. This particular day I came across the book Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in Early Christianity by Richard Bauckham. At that point I had not considered either the book of Jude or the Relatives of Jesus as of any consequence to my own work. But given my great admiration for Bauckham I picked it up and found a gem. The book is rather poorly titled if you ask me as he states his focus in the first sentence of the book:

"This book is a contribution to the history of Palestinian Jewish Christianity in the New Testament Period."[1]

At least a subtitle such as "A Contribution to the History of Jewish Christianity in the New Testament" would have revealed the central importance of this work.

Only recently have I had occasion to read parts of the book and I am again, as I have so many times by Bauckham's work, struck by the clarity of his conclusions based on detailed research of primary source material.

In the book he studies Jewish Christianity in the NT by considering three topics: (1) the significance of Jesus' family (excluding James) in the early church, (2) the book of Jude and (3) Luke's genealogy. While it is not apparent at least at first how the third point relates to the first two, Bauckham sees Luke's genealogy as offering evidence--along with the letter of Jude--of the theological character of the Christianity of the relatives of Jesus and their circle in the first generation of the church. He has reason to connect the genealogy and the family of Jesus because of the statement by Justin Africanus found in Eusebius' EH 1.7.14 about Jesus relatives referred to as the desposynoi ("those who belong to the master"):

"From the Jewish villages of Nazareth and Kokhaba they travelled around the rest of the land [most likely a reference to Eretz Israel] and interpreted the genealogy they had [from the family tradition] and from the Book of Days [i.e. Chronicles] as far as they could trace it [or: as far as they went on their travels]."[2]

Bauckham's conclusion is that the relatives of Jesus were the theological heart of the Jesus movement and set its theological course. Their work reveals that they developed a Christology based on three legs: (1) Davidic messianism, (2) "Enochic" apocalypticism, and (3) pesher exegesis.

Most interesting to me at least was his discussion of both the early Jewish Christian mission in Galilee lead by Jesus' relatives from Nazareth/Kokhaba during the first generation of the Jesus movement and the Davidic messianism contained in the Lukan genealogy. Luke's family tree reveals that Jesus' Davidic line runs not through Solomon (as Matthew's does), but through the lesser known son of David, Nathan, who is linked then to Zerubbabel. The genealogy is not Luke's creation and reveals a pre-Lukan traditional genealogy that traced the line from David to Nathan to Zerubbabel.

The striking assertion by Bauckham is that Luke’s genealogy derived from Jesus' family. Thus, as Bauckham avers:

"We must now see the family of Jesus as Davidides, conscious, through family tradition, of the hopes of Davidic restoration which had been cherished in their line since Zerubabbel . . . the tradition may not have been important to Jesus himself, but it was there to be activated and developed when Jesus’ relatives became some of his most convinced and dedicated followers". [3]

[1] Bauckham 1990:1, emphasis added.
[2] Bauckham 1990:61, with my addition.

[3] Bauckham 1990:376.


Bauckham, Richard. 1990. Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.

Plans for the Holidays

Well, I've finished my final lecture for 2007, time for the Christmas break. The plan is:

1. Spend lots of time with the family, open lots of presents, eat lots of turkey, roast potatoes, coca-cola, and potato chips.
2. Spend one hour a day reading through Bob Jewett's Romans commentary.
3. Finish writing on the messianic interpretation of the Son of Man for my Jesus-as-Messiah book.
4. Write a short 50 word article on "Paphos" for the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary and dream about summer holidays in Cyprus.
5. Do not do any marking of essays or exams whatsoever!
6. Preach Christmas sermon at Dingwall Baptist Church carols by candlelight service.

A High View of Scripture Part 4: A Closed Second Century Canon?

Craig Allert continues his argument that "Scripture" does not equal "Canon" through analysis of Christian writings from the second century.
It has often been argued that the heresies were one of the main reasons why the canon was formed, but according to Allert this is a half-truth. For instance, Marcion's insistence on the usage of Luke + Paul - the Old Testament may have been more concerned with rejecting certain writings than with assembling a definite collection. Marcion's collection was an influence on the emerging canon, but was not determinative for it. The writings revered and cited by the Church long after Marcion remained fluid and unfixed. When it comes to the Gnostics, the problem was not so much that they had their own set of Scriptures as much as it was that they were alleged to have pervereted the interpretation of the Church's own Scriptures. The issue with the Montanists was their claim to prophetic authority and not an attack of the authority of a recognized body of literature known as the canon.
Next Allert goes on to discuss the Muratorian Fragment (which mentions positively the Shepherd of Hermas, the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Apocalypse of Peter but raises doubts about their usage in public readings). The dating of the fragment is of course disputed and arguments include the late second and early fourth century. Graham Stanton has convinced me of a second century date (esp. with the references to the Shepherd of Hermas), but regardless of the dates Allert points out that everyone agrees that (1) by the end of the second century the four Gospels, Paul's letters, 1 Peter and 1 John were also used widely and had attained authoritative status, (2) the status of other writings varied throughout the second, third, and fourth centuries, (3) lists that restrict or delimit the scope of authoritative writings derive mainly from the fourth century. Allert writes: "Thus, rather than conceive of a closed New Testament canon in the second century, or even documents on the way to becoming canonical, we must shift our concerns to how authoritative documents functioned in the church and what these documents were" (p. 108).
On the subject of the Gospels in the second century, Allert is quick to point out that acquintance with, knowledge of, and citation from the Gospels does not mean that they were necessarily recognized as canonical or that there was an explicit four-fold canon. Interestingly enough, Allert points out that the Apostolic Fathers were interested in the words, teachings, and commands of Jesus from either oral or written sources. That is why we findstatements like: "remember the words of the Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Clem. 46.7). Viewed in this way, the Apostoic Fathers really were Red Letter Christians!
Justin Martyr is well known for his references to the "Memoirs ofthe Apostles" as his way of making reference to the Gospels. Justin may have used a harmony of some kind (I'm not quite as confident as Allert of this) and Justin incorporates certain non-biblical traditions such as the Magi coming from Arabia. Allert also mentions Gospel harmonies by Tatian, Ammonius of Alexandria, and Theophilus of Antioch. Tatian's Diastessaron was probably not named so by Tatian since it is given different names by later Christian authors. The Diatessaron also includes the variant tradition fo a great shining light at Jesus' baptism (known also to Justin Martyr and Epiphanius and perhaps in Gospel of the Ebionites). The Diatessaron itself was probably the first "Gospel" to reach Syria and it functioned as Scripture in the Syrian church up until the fifth century.
On Irenaeus of Lyons, Allert notes how he provided a concerted defense of the four-fold Gospel. The question is whether Irenaeus was being innovative at this point or whether he was providinga cosmic appropriateness to a widely accepted view of four Gospels in the Church? I favour the latter but that does not make the Gospels necessarily canonical. For Irenaeus the canon was the "canon/rule of faith" which tempered the exclusivity of the four Gospels as canon. The Rule of Faith itself was not rigidly defined, but a fluid and elastic articulation of the main doctrinal affirmations of the second century church. The Rule of Faith provided the context in which Scriptured was to be decided and interpreted. Allert concludes that: "There is no doubt that the Gospels known to us as canonical were authoritative in the second century. But these Gospels were not the exclusive source for faith and doctrine in the early church" (p. 126). Consequently Scripture (esp. Gospels and Paul) functioned authoritatively in the early church, but it functioned so within a wider ecclesial traditon.

New Dean for the Nida Institute

Over at RNS was this report:

Dr. Philip H. Towner Selected as Dean of Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship at American Bible Society

New York – November 19, 2007–The American Bible Society has announced that Dr. Philip H. Towner will become the Dean of the Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship at the American Bible Society. He will succeed Dr. Robert Hodgson, who is retiring in mid-2008. Dr. Towner will join the Bible Society staff in February to work with Dr. Hodgson over the several months before Dr. Hodgson’s retirement. The Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship connects Scripture, Scholarship and Society for the Bible Society. The Institute is named for Dr. Eugene Nida who was the executive secretary for translation at the Bible Society for four decades. It is the center of biblical scholarship and research at the American Bible Society, using its staff and library resources to support the ABS mission in the points of translation, education, quality control, creative services, and support for ABS visibility and media exposure.Dr. Towner is the Director of Translation Services for the United Bible Societies (UBS), based in Reading, England. The UBS is a fellowship of 145 Bible Societies around the world.In announcing the appointment, Rev. Dr. Paul Irwin, President of the American Bible Society, said, “I am delighted that Phil Towner will lead our scholarly work. Dr. Towner has earned a world-wide reputation in biblical translation and he will enhance the American Bible Society’s standing as a center of excellence in biblical scholarship.”Dr. Towner says, "I am very pleased to have been selected to take up the post of the Dean of the Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship, and I look forward with great anticipation to joining the American Bible Society team and its mission. The Nida Institute of the American Bible Society is at a very strategic point in its history. A gifted team and important scholarly and translation initiatives already underway form a very strong platform for continued forward movement and development. We intend to increase Bible Society prominence within the worldwide academic community and ensure our ongoing contribution to the mission tasks of Bible translation and training, Scripture Engagement and Biblical Scholarship." Dr. Hodgson says, “With the appointment of Dr. Phil Towner to the post of Dean of the Nida Institute, the American Bible Society will engage the services of a world-renowned New Testament expert, a distinguished translation scholar, an active churchman, and an executive with wide-ranging experience in management and administration.”Dr. Towner is a graduate of Northwestern College, Roseville, MN, with a B.A. in History and Biblical Criticism. He received his M.A. in New Testament Exegesis from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL and his Ph.D in New Testament Exegesis from the University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen Scotland. He is a member of the Institute for Biblical Research, the Society of Biblical Literature, Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas and the Tyndale Fellowship for Biblical and Theological Research. At this time Dr. Towner is an Honourary Lecturer in New Testament, University of St. Andrews in Scotland and a Research Professor of New Testament, Biblijne Seminarium Teologiczne in Wroclaw, Poland. Dr. Towner is the author of many books, articles, essays and reviews. And he also has served on the faculties of Denver Seminary, Denver, CO, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, Regent College, Vancouver, B.C. and China Evangelical Seminary, Taipei, Taiwan.

James Dunn on the New Perspective

James Dunn's 1983 essay "The New Perspective on Paul" originally published in BJRL, is now available on-line thanks to Mark Mattison of the Paul Page.

Method and Sources for the Study of Jewish Christianity (1.2. Introduction)

To sum up the earlier discussions of definition, we have defined “Jewish Christianity” as a particular expression of what can be characterized as a more general Jewish belief in Jesus. What’s more, we have defined “Jewish” in both cases by ethnicity or as Boyarin articulated, “a genealogical attachment to physical Israel”, but what is unique about Jewish Christians in contrast to Jewish believers is that the former maintain a Jewish lifestyle after conversion (Boyarin: “an attachment to the fleshly practices of that historical community”). Two qualifications are in order. First, conversion to Messiah Jesus in this sense is not a change of religious traditions as the term is commonly understood today, but rather a change in beliefs, belonging, and behavior within the Jewish scriptural tradition. Second, this entity is not however a monolith as it has been treated in the history of scholarship; but rather Jewish Christianity is a variegated entity like its mother, Second Temple Judaism.[1]

This means most importantly that one should not be overly concerned to define exactly what practices defined a unified Jewish Christianity. Since its mother consisted of diverse and competing sets of exegetical interpretations of Torah and consequent practices, it only stands to reason that no uniform list of practices can be established for Jewish Christianity. This in no way however should disqualify Jewish practice as an essential in any definition of Jewish Christianity or Jewish Christian.

With this definition in mind, we now turn to discuss briefly the sources and method used in researching Jewish Christianity in the early history of the church. Sources for the study of Jewish Christianity in the later first and early second centuries are of four types: early Christian literature, Greco-Roman literature, rabbinic writings and archaeology.

Addressing early Christian sources first, it must be admitted that there is an inherent difficulty in the determination of who is a Jew in an ancient text. Skarsaune quotes Shayne Cohen’s quip: “How do you know a Jew in Antiquity when you see one?”[2] In general, Skarsaune answers people would have known a Jew as a Jew by some “characteristic of their behavior”. To complicate matters more, with the existence of Gentile Judaizers—Gentiles who took on a Jewish lifestyle after converting to belief in Messiah Jesus—recognizing a Jewish Christian is even more difficult than recognizing a Jew in general.

In addition, given the Jewishness of early Christianity with its pervasive use of Jewish genres, symbols, images and ideology (e.g., apocalypticism, the Scriptures, Messianism, etc.) in earliest Christian writings, it is not enough simply to notice something “Jewish” in an ancient text and assume it represents Jewish Christianity. What we are after are quotes and sources authored by Jewish Christians. Thus, Skarsaune suggests three criteria for determining relevant material in early Christian literary sources for research on Jewish Christianity.

(1) Unless there is reason to doubt the particular author’s opinion, one should trust the patristic sources when they reference the Jewish ethnicity of a person.
(2) Given the dearth of Gentile believers who were adroit in Semitic languages (notable exceptions are Origen and Jerome), it is reasonable to assume that when patristic authors make use of Hebrew and Aramaic and/or show familiarity with post-biblical Jewish traditions they are relying on sources that ultimately go back to Jewish believers.
(3) Prohibitions against Jewish practices among early Christians, especially in Constantinian era, are near proof that those practices were in fact occurring.

Among the most widely recognized sources for the study of Jewish Christianity in early Christianity are:

(1) New Testament
(2) Pseudo-Clementine Writings
(3) So-called Jewish Christian Gospels
(4) Fragments of literature contained in the Heresiologists (Greek & Latin church Fathers)
(5) References to Jewish Believers in Fathers (Greek, Latin & Syriac)

Besides early Christian literary sources there is information on Jewish Christians in early Greco-Roman sources, rabbinic works and from archaeological finds. The two latter areas are rife with their own methodological difficulties they will not detain us here. In latter posts we will deal with each of these areas separately. Among Greco-Roman authors the most noteworthy is Celsus, a Middle Platonist philosopher, and will be dealt with when discussing references to Jewish believers in the Fathers.

[1] See Segal (1992:327) has expressed this well: “Although most Jewish groups remained loyal to the law, what loyalty meant differed radically for each sectarian position . . . all these opinions about the law were represented in early Christianity as well, since the earliest Christians took many of their converts from the ranks of Judaism”.
[2] Skarsaune 2006a:17.

Works Cited
Segal, Alan F. 1992. Jewish Christianity. In Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism, ed. Harold W. Attridge and Gohei Hata, 42:326-51. Leiden ; New York: Brill.

More on Arab Christians

Over at CT there is an article on Suffocating the Faith which is about the plight of Christians in the middle east. There is another good article over at RNS about the persecution of Arab Christians including the decline of Christians in Bethlehem from making up 65% to 15% of population since 1995!

Rhydian

In what was, no doubt, the greatest travesty of injustice in the history of the UK music industry, Rhydian Roberts the Christian singer from Wales lost the X-Factor final to Leon Jackson, the pretty boy Michael Buble impersonator from Glasgow. Rhydian has a voice the likes I have never heard before. I despise watching television as a pointless interruption to reading, writing, or playing with the kids; but this Rhydian had me hooked. His voice made the hairs on my neck stand up! If you don't believe me, then check out his songs on You Tube. Go to this site and at the bottom of the page listen to his rendition of "You Lift Me Up". Or go to this site and listen to his version of Welsh national anthem. But keep a hanky ready for you will weep.

What is more, Rhydian is also a Christian (I learned this believe or not from a gay men's website, don't ask me how I found it!) and he's even admitted to being a virgin and he rejects the idea of being a "closet Christian". See the article about his faith here. All I can say is long live Rhydian and may he have a long and sucessful career and I hope that he makes an album of classic hymns that I'd love to hear. This guy's voice . . . listen for yourselves!

Boyarin on the definition of "Gentile Christianity"

We have been discussing the definition of Jewish Christianity and perhaps looking at it from the opposite direction may offer a further clarification of the term Jewish Christian. To this end, we appeal to D. Boyarin’s definition in his recent book Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (see side bar for the book).[1]

While we will have occasion later to discuss the important arguments of this book in greater detail, I focus here on his definition of “Gentile Christianity” in the introduction. In orienting the reader to his argument, Boyarin presents one of the basic assertions of the book: the early rabbinic writings developed in response to burgeoning Gentile Christianity represented by figures like Justin Martyr. He believes that the rabbis sought to “set the bounds” of who is in and who is out of Judaism as they understood it in reaction to the claims of Gentile Christianity. Thus, within this discussion Boyarin defines the object of rabbis’ attention, Gentile Christianity, by stating:

[Gentile Christianity] refer[s] to Christian converts from among non-Jews (and their descendants) who have neither a sense of genealogical attachment to the historical, physical people of Israel (Israel according to the flesh), nor an attachment (and frequently the exact opposite one) to the fleshly practices of that historical community”[2]

What is noticeable in Boyarin’s definition are the converse elements of description to what Skarsuane has defined as Jewish Christian.

Jewish Christian Gentile Christian
Attachment to historical, physical people of Israel No attachment
Attachment to physical practices of Jewish community No attachment to Jewish practices

Two points are noteworthy. First, similar to Skarsaune, Boyarin seems to implicitly stress the Jewish community’s role in determining Jewish identity. One could perhaps amplify his last point: “nor an attachment to the concrete practices recognized and preformed by a historical Jewish community”. The formulation suggests that it is the historic community that determines Jewish identity as Skarsaune has argued. Second, ethnicity and practice are key factors in defining not only who is or isn’t a Jewish Christian, but conversely who is a Gentile Christian.

[1] Boyarin 2004.
[2] Boyarin 2004:29, emphasis added.

Works Cited
Boyarin, Daniel. 2004. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Divinations. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Book Review: John, the Maverick Gospel

Robert Kysar
John, the Maverick Gospel
Third Edition
Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox, 2007.
Available from Amazon.com in the USA
Availabe from Alban Books in the UK

Robert Kysar's update of his well known introduction to John is much welcomed (first published in 1976) and it attests to a lifetime of learning in the Fourth Gospel. The Introduction covers the usual matters including the language of the Fourth Gospel, relationship to the Synoptics, structure, purpose, destination, and date. Then Kysar examines Johannine Christology which focuses on the Father-Son relationship (chapter one). What is covered next is the Johannine Dualism where Kysar is concerned mainly with John's Gospel and the problem of evil (chapter two). Johannine concepts of faith (chapter three) comes up for discussion as does John's eschatology which takes into account also views of the Spirit, Church, and Sacraments (chapter four). Finally, in the conclusion Kysar looks at the "Future of the Maverick Gospel" including modern and postmodern interpretations.

This is a good introduction to John's Gospel. I appreciate the way that Kysar has changed his mind and he rejects reading John in light of the so-called birkhat ha-minim and he acknowledges the weight of Bauckham's Gospels for All Christians perspective. Some parts I cannot embrace as I do not share Kysar's enthusiasm for postmodern perspectives on John. Kysar is right that John is maverick Gospel but I would hardly call it a "heterodox form of Christianity" since its reception was very positive (with a few exceptions) in the early church. The only way this volume could be improved is with a chapter on the reception-history of John. If you're teaching on John or preaching on John this is a user friendly book (with many diagrams) that can help.

A High View of Scripture - Part 3: Canon and Ecclesiology

In chapter three of A High View of Scripture, Craig Allert looks at the relationship between canon and ecclesiology or "the centrality of the church in the formation of the New Testament" (p. 67). In his mind the problem is that: "In contemporary evangelical discussions of the doctrine of Scripture, the importance of the ecclesial context is often lost or, at best, downplayed. What I mean by this is that many tratments of the doctrine of Scripture assume that the overriding concern of the church was to form a written collection (a New Testament canon) so that it might have a solid rule by which to govern its faith and life" (p. 68). All valid points in my mind. Allert's main point is that in the early church when the Church Father's spoke of "Scripture" they did not necessarily mean "canon" and when they spoke of "inspiration" they did not see this as limited to the Church's Holy Writings.

At one point Allert states what is at stake for him in the discussion: "Much is at stake for me in this study, for as an evangelical I have been taught and still maintain that the Bible is central in the Christian life; this has not been a merely academic study. As I trace those ten or so years, I can see how the study of theological history, particularly the function of Scripture in the early church, has impacted every otehr area of my theological study" (pp. 75-76). Whereas Allert claims he once believed in "No creed but the Bible" he has come to realize that "The church existed before the Bible" and that "the Christianity of history is not Protestantism" (p. 76). Thus John Henry Newmann was right, though Allert claims to be driven to a deeperer understanding of the church while remaining within Protestantism.

On canon itself, Allert points out that "canon" usually meant the rule of faith and could be used to refer to conciliar decisions, monastic rules, clerygy and various ecclesial lists. Resultantly: "The canonical tradition in the church was meant to be seen as awhole, as contributing to the life and well-being of the entire community" (p. 82). Isolating the Scriptures from the Rule of Faith leads to the problems that Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Vincent of Lerins saw, they become employed in service of heresy. The Father's saw Scripture as authoritative and normative for the early church and they cite it on nearly every page, but Scripture was understood and applied within the context of the life of the church and alongside the Rule of Faith. He writes, "the authority of Scripture in the early chruch is inadequately conceived when it is yanked outo f the context of teh believing community and placed at the whim of the individual".

My own reflections on this are:
1. I am starting to think that a doctrine of Scripture should be a subset of ecclesiology rather than as a stand alone topic of bibliology. To many this will probably sound like a step towards Catholicism, I hope it is rather a step towards the ancient churches of Rome, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. I should note that my colleague at HTC, Prof. Andrew McGowan in his book The Divine Spiration of Scripture, has recently argued that a doctrine of Scripture should be placed in the context of the Doctrine of God!
2. The idea of situating one's beliefs in the context of the great tradition of the church is an idea explored by Steve Harmon in his excellent book Towards Baptist Catholicity.
3. On the Rule of Faith, Peter Balla in his book Challenges to New Testament Theology, has argued that something similar to the Rule of Faith is in fact the centre of a NT Theology. In which case the Rule of Faith is created by Scripture, the upshot is that Scripture itself creates the framework in which it is to be interpreted.

More on "Jewish Christianity"

I for one am much enjoying Joel Willitts' read through Jewish Believers in Jesus (JBJ). The topic fascinates me and it is also good because I'm currently reading through Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (the volume I think is a bit hit and miss).

Part of the problem of defining Jewish Christianity is, for a start, that all of Christianity at least prior to 70 AD is in some form or other "Jewish Christianity". One must wonder then if we should adopt the sub-definition of Judaeo Christianity or Christian Judaism to define that form of Christianity that continued to live a Jewish lifestyle of Torah obedience in combination with faith in Jesus. But even then the problem with praxis (or Torah-observance) based definitions is that Christian Gentiles from the time of Paul to Ignatius of Antioch to John Chrysostom were known to follow elements of the Torah.

Reed thinks that it might be more profitable to define Jewish Christianity as pertaining to certain "modes of belief and worship as a natural extension of Christianity's origins within Judaism, Christians' continued contacts with Jews, and the church's use of the Jewish Scriptures, as well as the long and rich tradition of messianic speculation within Judaism itself" (p. 231). But I submit that such a definition would aptly describe some forms of non-Jewish (non-ethnically Jewish) Gentile Christianity. Back to square one I guess!

Definition of “Jewish Christianity”, “Jewish Christian” and “Jewish Believer in Jesus”, Part Two (1.1. Introduction)

I began in my last post developing the question of the definition of “Jewish Christian”, “Jewish Christianity”, and “Jewish believer in Jesus”. We noted that Skarsaune and the volume Jewish Believers in Jesus (from here it will be abreviated JBJ) use an ethnically based definition in designating the “who” of their study. Skarsaune believes that “(1) the modern terms ‘Jewish believers in Jesus’ and ‘Jewish Christian’ are not without precedent in the ancient sources; and (2) in the ancient sources, ethnicity is the sole criterion for the adjective ‘Jewish’ as it is used in the combined terms ‘Jewish believer’ and ‘Jewish Christian’”.[1]

Furthermore, the editors of the volume wish to differentiate between “Jewish believers in Jesus”, of whom they mean any person of Jewish ethnicity who believes in Jesus as their savior implying nothing of their relationship to a continuing Jewish lifestyle and a “Jewish Christian”. Of the latter they essentially follow the Frenchman S. Mimouni’s definition which he formulated in the late nineties in the essay “La question de la définition du judéo-christianisme”: “ancient Jewish Christianity is a modern term designating those Jews who recognized Jesus as messiah, who recognized or did not recognize the divinity of Christ, but who, all of them, continued to observe the Torah”.[2]

The primary question that arises, however, from such an ethnic-based definition is: how does one determine who is ethnically Jewish; what is the criterion for that determination in a person’s ethnicity in ancient literature? This has been perhaps the most considerable critique of ethnically based definitions in the history of research because there is an obvious inability to determine the race of a person: Who is really Jewish?[3]

Skarsuane anticipating this question seeks to address it by attempting to steer clear of any anachronistic appeal to current halakic answers, namely, “a Jew is a person born by a Jewish mother or a person converted to Judaism according to rabbinic halakic procedure”.[4] Instead, Skarsuane asserts that whatever difficulties surround the terms “Jew” and “Jewish” with respect to determination of how one became Jewish, there is still a “basic fact” that in the Second Temple period and beyond, “Jews in general have had little doubt about who were Jews and who were not”.[5] Thus, for Skarsuane the bottom line regarding Jewish identity is left to the individual Jewish community themselves. He avers: “people who considered themselves Jewish and were considered to be Jewish by the Jewish community were Jewish”.[6]

Skarsaune’s approach seems to me to be commendable for a couple of reasons. First, he has antiquity on his side and can’t be accused of imposing anachronistic categories on ancient phenomena. Second, since what might be called the ontological verification of Jewish ethnicity is inaccessible even for the question of race today for that matter, appealing to the “Jewish community” strikes me as reasonable basis for judging who or who isn’t Jewish. This places ethnicity not simply in a certain percentage of bloodline, but also in the determination of the ethnic group in question. This type of understanding of Jewish identity is perhaps no more evident than with Jewish proselytes who while not Jewish by blood, are considered Jewish by the community.

Given this understanding of ethnicity, however, one might legitimately call into question Skarsaune’s definition and object that such a definition stretches the categories of race and ethnicity too far. I think the issue of what constitutes ethnicity should indeed produce future discussions and debate, although I am quite ready to jump on board with his conception on Jewish identity.

A second way Skarsuane’s definition addresses the continuing scholarly discussion of definition is the diversity of expressions of belief in Jesus among Jews his perspective allows. Unlike earlier approaches, Skarsaune’s “Jewish believers in Jesus” incorporates both those who are traditionally referred as Jewish Christians—those who also continue a Jewish lifestyle, but also includes those who after belief in Jesus assimilate into the Gentile Christian expression of Jesus belief. What’s more, in agreeing with Mimouni’s definition of “Jewish Christianity” (see above), the approach advocated by the editors of JBJ allows for a diversity of opinion even among those who fit under the label “Jewish Christian”. This kind of diversity would be analogous to the diversity within Second Temple Judaism that is widely accepted by scholars today.

One final point about definition relates to the praxis aspect of Skarsaune’s definition of “Jewish Christianity”. The oft suggested critique of praxis-based definitions of Jewish Christianity in the history of research—that there is no clear formulation regarding which laws must be kept to be considered a Jewish Christian—can be again applied here. Still, for me this critique losses much of its force when the issue of praxis is placed in the context of the Second Temple period, for at least the beginning of the Jesus movement.

It seems clear to most scholars of ancient Judaism and early Christianity from the extant evidence of the late Second Temple period that there was a variegated covenantal nomism such that, while there was a basic “common denominator” of belief and practice, there was a wide degree of diversity. Moreover, some groups defined themselves as the “true Israel” in contrast to the rest of the Jewish people based on their “unique” praxis (e.g. Essenes, Pharisees, etc.). It seems reasonable then that differing Jewish expressions of faith in Jesus should be regarded as Jewish if a certain "common denominator" of practice were evinced.

In the next post I will address the issue of sources for Jewish Christianity.

[1] Skarsaune 2006a:7.
[2] Mimouni 1998; translation is Skarsaune’s (2006a:4, 9).
[3] See Carleton Paget’s (2006:38, 42, 44, 49) discussion.
[4] Skarsaune 2006a:11.
[5] Skarsaune 2006a:13.
[6] Skarsaune 2006a:13, emphasis added.

Works Cited:

Carleton Paget, James. 2006. The Definition of the Terms Jewish Christian and Jewish Christianity in the History of Research. In A History of Jewish Believers in Jesus: The First Five Centuries, ed. Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik:22-52. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

Mimouni, Simon Claude. 1998. La question de la définition du judéo-christianisme. In Le judéo-christianisme ancien: essais historiques, ed. Simon Claude Mimouni:39-72. Paris: Éditions du Cerf.

Skarsaune, Oskar. 2006a. Jewish Believers in Jesus in Antiquity—Problem of Definition, Method, and Sources. In A History of Jewish Believers in Jesus: The First Five Centuries, ed. Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik:3-21. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

The Place of the Gospel in Biblical and Systematic Theology

Over at BeginningwithMoses.org, Dave Gibson and his cohort of biblical-theological-bloggers have put together another find series of articles on biblical theology. It includes a piece by myself entitled: A Theology of the Gospel: The Gospel as the Starting-Point and Integrating-Point for Biblical and Systematic Theology. One of my rare forays into systematic theology.

Latest Issue of SBET

The latest issue of the Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 25.2 2007 includes:

David F. Wright
The Great Commission and the Ministry of the Word: Reflections Historical and Contemporary on Relations and Priorities.

Peter Neilson
Beyond Congregation: Christian Community for Today's Searchers

Lynn H. Cohick
Why Women Followed Jesus: A Discussion of Female Piety

Brian Talbot
Unity and Diversity? Success and Failure among Baptists in Scotland prior to 1870

Christopher R.J. Holmes
Wholly Human and Wholly Divine, Humiliated and Exalted: Some Reformed Explorations in Bonhoeffer's Christology Lectures