User:Gabriele Boccaccini

Chapter 1 -- Introduction

[Paul the Hater]

In an age of resurgent religious intolerance, Jews, Christians and Muslims are challenged to prove that monotheistic religions are not intrinsically intolerant and exclusive, but indeed capable to inspire and unite people of good will in peace and coexistence. Fully aware that this has not always been the case, Jews, Christians and Muslims are compelled to look at themselves and face the “evil within”, the roots of violence and hatred hidden in their own religious traditions and beliefs.

In the road to interfaith dialog and mutual respect, Paul of Tarsus appears today more an obstacle than a facilitator. Born a Jew, we are told that he “became” a Christian, making manifest with his own conversion and teaching that faith in Jesus is the only path to salvation and all the unbelievers are condemned to perdition unless they convert and submit themselves to the Christian Messiah.

<<Are monotheistic religions intrinsically and mutually intolerant and exclusive? The experience and teaching of Paul appear more an obstacle than a seem of much help. who was “born a Jew” and “became a Christian” Isn’t Paul’s experience of “conversion” and his doctrine of salvation insurmountable obstacles in the road to interfaith dialog and respect? Did Paul really believe that faith in Christ was the only path to salvation and all the unbelievers are condemned to perdition unless they convert and submit themselves to the Christian Messiah? Is this idea not only morally untenable, but also historically incorrect?>>

In the context of first-century Judaism, Paul's figure appears to be among the most enigmatic and one of the hardest to grasp. A halo of mystery, if not the curse of an ancient taboo, still seems to hover around him and make a serene understanding of his experience difficult.

Paul weighs the cumbersome reputation that indicates him as the first great systematic theologian of nascent Christianity, but also weighs the suspicion - if not the accusation - of having contributed decisively to the separation between Christianity and Judaism and to have thrown the basis of a poisonous polemic against the Torah and the people of Israel, a harbinger of prejudice, intolerance and discrimination, up to the Holocaust tragedy.

The rediscovery of the Jewishness of Jesus, which since the end of the nineteenth century has engaged Jewish and Christian scholars in a joint effort, has contributed to further digging the furrow. The more the figure of the Master proves to be compatible with the spirit of the Judaism of his time, the more his most famous disciple appears to be the man of rupture, when not even the true founder of Christianity as a religion distinct from Judaism. Already in the 10th century, the Karaite leader Yaqub al Qirqasini opposed the unjustly persecuted Jew Jesus to Paul, seen as the authentic creator of Christianity.

It can’t be easily overlooked that for centuries Paul has been praised by Christians, and blamed by Jews, for separating Christianity from Judaism. Paul appeared to Christians as the convert who unmasked and denounced the “weakness” (if not the wickedness) of Judaism, and to Jews as the traitor who made a mockery of the faith of his ancestors (Zetterholm 2009).

“None has produced more animosity between Jews and Christians… Paul has long been regarded as the source for Christian hatred of Jews and Judaism … [He] turned his back on his former life as a Jew and became the spokesman for early Christian anti-Judaism” (Gager 3-4)

In order to affirm the grace of Christianity, Paul denounced Judaism as a legalistic religion

In order to affirm his universalistic project, Paul had to fight against Jewish particularism

"Christianity began with one tremendous problem. Clearly the message of Christianity was meant for all men… But the fact remained that Christianity was cradled in Judaism; and, humanly speaking, no message which was meant for all the world could even have had a more unfortunate cradle. The Jews were involved in a double hatred--the world hated them and they hated the world" (Barclay 1958, p.9).

These shameful words were written in 1958 by one of the most respected Christian theologians of the time. A Britishman

He preached Even more paradoxical is how the Christian tradition did not see any contradiction between praising Paul as the advocate of Christian universalism vs. Jewish particularism, and making him the major proponent of Christian exclusiveness. Everybody (Jews and Gentile, men and women, freepeople and slaves) are called and welcomed, but there is only one way of salvation in Christ for all humankind. <This wa already notice by Sandmel: “Paul felt that his version of Judaism was for all humankind, yet Paul was no thorough-going universalist. His universalism did lead him to deny any difference between Jew and Greek, so long on both are in Christ” (Sandmel, 21).

A message of inclusiveness generated an even more insurmountable wall of intolerance between believers and unbelievers. Condemned by their own "perfidy", by their guilty absence of faith, the Jewish people, who once were "the chosen people of God", came to be deprived of all dignity, and pushed to damnation like all gentile unbelievers or believers in another religions, if not through the individual experience of conversion and rejection of their own cultural, religious and ethnic identity.

What a paradox! Paul preached grace and generated hatred; preached inclusion and generated exclusion. Should we then resign to take a different path in spite of Paul, or even expose him as a champion of intolerance (In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul) “is the genius of hatred, in the standpoint of hatred, and in the relentless logic of hatred” (gager 9), or to put it in a more colorful, contemporaneous vocabulary, “a racist, chauvinist jerk” ?

Yet there's something not quite right about this. Among the authors of early Christianity, Paul is the one who most strongly claims his Jewishness ("I too am an Israelite, of the descendants of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin" - Rom 11: 1) defends the irrevocability of the divine promises ( "God has rejected his people? Nothing at all!", Rom 11: 1) and with more readiness reiterates the "privileges" of Israel in the face of the zeal of the new converts among the Gentiles ("You, oleastro [...] boast against the branches! "- Rom 11: 17-18).

On the other hand, Judaism hardly fits the feature of "legalism" that following the Christian approach was denounced by scholars like Weber, Schurer, and Bousset.

Specialists of Rabbinic Judaism like Claude Joseph Montefiore, Salomon Schecter and George Foot Moore repeated in their work that this was not the case, but their work and little impact. In 1921 Moore published an article openly denouncing the bias (and antisemitism) of many of his colleagues.<ref>Christian Writers on Judaism.

The war, the Holocaust

Thanks to the works of Krister Stendhal, E.P. Sanders, James D.G. Dunn and others, the "New Perspective" has begun since the '70s to question that radical opposition between grace and law that made Paul the implacable critic of Jewish "legalism", recognizing in this opposition not the authentic voice of the first century, but the anachronistic reflection of the controversy that divided Christianity with the Reformation in the sixteenth century. With the collapse of the "Lutheran Paul" the myth of the supposed stainless coherence of the Pauline thought has also fallen. Scholars and theologians began to insist rather on the paradoxical features of Pauline theology, its non-systematic nature, its being linked to contingent problems and situations, and therefore its substantial inconsistency. Paul was not a theologian or a systematic thinker. Paul was a pastor, dealing with communities of flesh-and-blood people and with extremely real problems. For Paul - as affirmed with effective conciseness by E. P. Sanders - the solution precedes the problem. He saw the Gentiles approaching with Christianity faith and enthusiasm; his theological effort was to try to justify the fact in retrospect. Pauline reflection would then not be the theoretical premise for the entry of the Gentiles into the Christian community, but the attempt, even a bit confused and theologically not entirely coherent, to justify the event in which he recognized the merciful action of God.

The New Perspective has also tried hard to get rid of the most derogatory aspects of the traditional (Lutheran) reading of Paul (claiming that Judaism also should be regarded as a “respectable” religion based on grace). It has effectively rediscovered the Jewish structure of Paul's thought, emphasizing its pragmatic and pastoral aspects against its presumed theological consistency. It has not however challenged the view of Paul as the critic of Judaism and the advocate of a new supersessionist model of relations between God and humankind—God’s grace “in Christ” superseded the Jewish covenant for both Jews and gentiles by creating a third separate “race.” Paul “explicitly denies that the Jewish covenant can be effective for salvation, thus consciously denying the basis of Judaism … Paul polemicizes … against the prior fundamentals of Judaism: the election, the covenant, and the law” (Sanders, 551f).

Another line of thought was pursued by scholars like Krietser Stendahl (1963), Lloyd Gaston (1977), Stanley Stowers (1994), John Lodge (1996), John G. Gager (2000).

Paul was and remained a Jew

Two paths to salvation: “one, God’s unshakable commitment to Israel and to the holiness of the Law (=Judaism), and two, the redemption of the Gentiles through Jesus Christ. (Gager, 152).

Mark Nanos, A new paradigm is emerging today with the “Paul within Judaism” Perspective—a paradigm that aims to fully rediscover the Jewishness of Paul. Paradoxically, “Paul was not a Christian,”2 since Christianity, at the time of Paul, was nothing else than a Jewish messianic movement, and therefore, Paul should be regarded as nothing other than a Second Temple Jew. What else should he have been? Paul was born a Jew, of Jewish parents, was circumcised, and nothing in his work supports (or even suggests) the idea that he became (or regarded himself as) an apostate.3 On the contrary, Paul was a member of the early Jesus movement, and with strength and unmistakable clarity, proudly claimed his Jewishness, declaring that God also did not reject God’s covenant with the chosen people: “Has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin” (Rom. 11:1; cf. Phil. 3:5).

MY VIEW

I have never been content with the traditional “Lutheran” approach. In 1991 in a chapter of my book Middle Judaism devoted to Paul and James, I wrote: “No New Testament writing is more or less Jewish for the simple reason that they are all Jewish… Even Paul belongs to Judaism: the ideas he expresses (including those that appear most extraneous, such as the theories of original sin and justification by faith), are an integral part of the Jewish cultural and religious patrimony of the first century… Of course, there is an obvious ad extra polemic in the New Testament, but this itself is part of the internal debate within Judaism at the time…” (Boccaccini, Middle Judaism, 1991, p.215).

PAUL THE JEW AND PAUL THE CHRISTIAN

Obviously my sympathies are all for the Paul-within-Judaism perspective. Paul was and remained a Jew. He was and remained all his life an observant Jew. And yet I am not persuaded that Paul was just an ordinary Jew’ And yet I am not completely persuaded by the “two ways” The Jesus movement was born within Judaism and the many Jews who joined it (including Paul) did it for personal reasons that where independent from the inclusion of Gentiles. I am convinced of separating Jesus and Paul from their movement I am not convinced that the solution be in a simple call to forget Luther and the Christian Paul, as if they were never existed

Obviously There have been something in their teaching that would lead to future developments. If Paul was a Jew, we should neither try to connect his ideas to later understandings of Judaism, nor isolate the from the contemporary conversation thare must be something that connects Paul to “Jesus was not the first founder of Christianity and Paul was not the second” (Gager, vii) Paul was not a Christian (Eisenbaum).

How is it possible to claim that “Christianity” has nothing to do with Jesus and Paul. There must have been something in Jesus and Paul must have laid the foundations for How is it possible to reconcile Paul the Jew with Paul the Christian.

DIVERSITY IN SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM

Se oggi possiamo parlare del Paolo ebreo e' perche' la nostra comprensione dell’ebraismo del primo secolo è in questi ultimi decenni profondamente cambiata. I manoscritti del Mar Morto e i cosiddetti apocrifi e pseudepigrafi dell’Antico Testamento ci hanno restituito l’immagine di un’età creativa e dinamica e di un ambiente vitale e pluralistico, nel quale convivevano espressioni tra loro anche profondamente diverse dello stesso ebraismo, incluso il nascente movimento cristiano 10. Due elementi sono ormai acquisiti alla ricerca contemporanea e costituiscono il punto di partenza di ogni riflessione ulteriore:

(1) Il giudaismo del Secondo Tempio era diviso in correnti di pensiero in dialogo e competizione tra loro.

Nel secondo Tempio - come testimonia Giuseppe - esistevano tre distinte tendenze dottrinali: i sadducei, i farisei (con l'ala radicale e militante degli zeloti) e gli esseni. A queste correnti dovremmo aggiungere anche il giudaismo ellenistico (di cui Giuseppe Flavio non tratta concentrandosi sull'ambiente palestinese) e il movemento gesuano la cui distintivita' certo nessuno vorra' negare all'interno del giudaismo del Secondo Tempio in nome di un rigido monolitismo.

Certamente assieme alla visione monolitica dobbiamo evitare l'estremo opposto, come giustamente rileva Pitta di "considerare ogni variazione cristologica e comportamentale nelle prime comunita' cristiane come forma autonoma di giudaismo e di cristianesimo" (p.24). In media stat virtus dicevano gli antichi e cosi' e' vero anche in questo campo. Se non si puo' negare la diversita' non si puo' nemmeno arrivare arrivare all'assurdo che esista una forma diversa di giudaismo o di cristianesimo per ciascuno dei testi pervenutivi o dei leader conosciuti o di ogni piu' piccola sfumatura di pensiero. Esistono tuttavia delle grandi famiglie all'interno di ogni religione che hanno portato e portano avanti visioni diverse delle stessa religione.

L'ovvia realtà' e' davanti agli occhi di tutti. Non c'e' ne' mai c'e' stato un unico momento nella storia dell'ebraismo o del cristianesimo in cui essi siano stati delle religioni monolitiche. Oggi parliamo di giudaismo ortodosso, conservativo e riformato e di cristianesimi ortodosso, cattolico e protestante ma anche prima che emergessero queste moderne divisioni esistevano altre divisioni e cosi' lungo tutto il corso della storia. Ieri come oggi.

Personalmente trovo un po' oziosa la discussione semantica sull'uso del singolare (varieta' di giudaismo e di cristianesimo) o del plurale (giudaismi o cristianesimi). Che se li chiami "giudaismi" o “varietà diverse di giudaismo" la sostanza non cambia. Al tempo d'oggi come al tempo di Gesu' non esisteva un solo modo di intendere il giudaismo ma modi diverse tra loro in dialogo o in competizione (o giudaismi). E quando il movimento di Gesu; emerse le stesse divisioni ben presto si rifletterono all'interno della nuova sette producendo diverse forme di cristianesimo (o cristianesimi)

E’ questa la ragione per la quale molti studiosi usano oggi comunemente il plurale, "giudaismi", a indicare la grande varietà di pensiero del giudaismo nel primo secolo e le varie movimenti religiosi nel quali l'ebraismo del tempo si divideva. Anche chi come Sacchi o Pitta o Collins conserva remore semantiche sull'uso del plurale applicato al termine "giudaismo", non nega la sostanza del problema, che cioè la religione ebraica del tempo fosse estremamente variegata. E' questa un'idea oggi universalmente accettata nel mondo degli studi. Che si parli di "giudaismi" o di "correnti giudaiche" in discorso non cambia. Comunque la si esprimi, siamo oggi messi in guardia da ogni visione monolitica costruita sulle più tardive fonti rabbiniche11.

(2) Il movimento di gesu e' parte integrante del pluralismo giudaico del Second Tempio.

Una volta liberatici dai pregiudizi interpretativi e teologici del passato, ci troviamo di fronte ad alcune scoperte sorprendenti. Ad esempio, molte di quelle che eravamo abituati a considerare idee “tipicamente” paoline e addirittura “anti-giudaiche” (quali la giustificazione per fede, il peccato originalee la drammatica percezione dell’insufficienza dell’obbedienza alle norme della Torah ai fini della salvezza) si sono rivelate essere idee diffuseanche in altri ambienti e gruppi giudaici del tempo, spesso con alle spalle una storia secolare.

Ma anche di fronte alle idee "nuove" elaborate all'interno del nascente movimento cristiano sarebbe metodologicamente scorretto considerare come non-giudaica (o non più giudaica) ogni idea che non abbia un parallelo con altri autori o testi giudaici del tempo. Con questo criterio nessuno pensatore originale ebraico sarebbe più ebreo nel momento in cui elabora nuove idee rispetto alla tradizione ricevuta. Non lo sarebbe Filone, Giuseppe Flavio o Hillel. Lo stesso vale per Gesu o Paolo. Il fatto stesso che abbiano elaborato idee originali le rende certo distintive del nuovo movimento ma non per questo meno giudaiche. Va rigettato ogni tentativo di applicare una diversa misura nell'interpretazione delle origini cristiane rispetto alle altre forme di giudaismo del tempo.

If we can claim that Philo was a Jew and at the same time represented of a distinctive form of Judaism, the same is possible with Paul.

Three Caveats about the Jewishness of Paul Since my remarks focus on the Jewishness of Paul, it is important to clarify, as a premise, what we should not imply by that, in order to avoid some common misunderstandings. 1. In order to reclaim the Jewishness of Paul, we do not have to prove that he was a Jew like everybody else, or that he was not an original thinker. It is important not to apply to Paul a different standard than to any other Jew of his time. To claim that finding any idea in Paul that is unparalleled in other Jewish authors makes Paul “non-Jewish” would lead to the paradox that no original thinker of Second Temple Judaism should be considered “Jewish”—certainly not Philo or Josephus or Hillel or the Teacher of Righteousness, all of whom also formulated “original” answers to the common questions of their age. Why should only Paul be considered “non-Jewish” or “no longer Jewish” simply because he developed some original thinking? The very notion of making a distinction within Paul between his Jewish and “non-Jewish” (or “Christian”) ideas does not make any sense. Paul was Jewish in his “traditional” ideas and remained such even in his “originality.” Paul was a Jewish thinker and all his ideas (even the most nonconformist) were Jewish. 2. In order to reclaim the Jewishness of Paul, we do not have to 
downplay the fact that he was a very controversial figure, not only within Second Temple Judaism, but also within the early Jesus movement. The classical interpretation that the controversial nature of Paul (both within and outside his movement) relied on his attempt to separate Christianity from Judaism does not take into consideration the diversity of Second Temple Jewish thought. There was never a monolithic Judaism versus an equally monolithic Christianity. There were many diverse varieties of Judaism (including the early Jesus movement, which, in turn, was also very diverse in its internal components). 
 3. In order to reclaim the Jewishness of Paul, we do not have to prove that he had nothing to say to Jews and that his mission was aimed only at the inclusion of gentiles. As Daniel Boyarin has reminded us in his work on Paul, a Jew is a Jew, and remains a Jew, even when he or she expresses radical self-criticism toward his or her own religious tradition or against other competitive forms of Judaism.4 Limiting the entire Pauline theological discourse to the sole issue of the inclusion of gentiles would once again confine Paul the Jew to the fringes of Judaism and overshadow the many implications of his theology in the broader context of Second Temple Jewish thought. 


Chiarite queste premesse metodologiche e' possibile un tentativo di lettura di Paolo non semplicemente in rapporto al giudaismo o nel suo contesto giudaico ma come parte integrante di esso. Se il cristianesimo non si fosse mai sviluppato come religione autonoma, questo sarebbe il modo in cui oggi leggeremmo Paolo, come un autore ebraico del Secondo Tempo, come il Maestro di giustizia o Filone, dei quali nessuno mette in discussione l'ebraicita' nonostante l'originalità delle loro posizioni. Una lettura teologica odierna di Paolo non può ovviamente prescindere dagli sviluppi posteriori, ma una lettura storica non anacronistica ci spinge a immaginare un tempo in cui il "cristiano" Paolo si collocava su un piano non diverso dall'esseno Maestro di Giustizia, dal fariseo "Hillel" o dal giudeo ellenista Filone. Forse e' giunto il momento che la figura di Paolo sia ricollocata nel suo ambito originario storico di appartenenza

Ci sono segnali evidenti che spingono oggi in questa direzione. I piu’ recenti dizionari del giudaismo del Secondo Tempo (come the "Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism" a cura di John J Collins e Harlow contiene un articolo su Paolo (a firma di Daniel Harrington) e 4 Enoch: The online Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism include gli Studi Paolini alla stessa stregua degli studi su Qumran o su Filone. Una tale inclusivita' sarebbe stata impensabile anche solo alcuni anni fa e si colloca in una linea generale di riappropriazione del nascente cristianesimo al giudaismo del primo secolo, di cui si vedono segnali evidenti a livello internazionale. Il presente studio non ha la pretesa di risolvere tutti i numerosi e complessi problemi della teologia paolina ma di offrire alcuni spunti di riflessione che vadano nella direzione di un contributo ad una lettura della figura di Paolo come uno dei protagonisti maggiori del giudaismo del Secondo Tempio, senza negare l'apporto da egli dato al nascente movimento cristiano. Non si tratta di porre il Paolo ebreo in contrasto con il Paolo cristiano, ma di ribadire che all'interno della diversità giudaica del Second Tempio i due termini non sono affatto in contraddizione ed e' possibile leggere Paolo (e Gesu') come pensatori ebrei ed esponenti di un movimento riformatore ebraico che e’ parte integrante della diversita’ ebraica del primo secolo e che solo in seguito (e con molto gradualita) si separata' dalle altre forme di giudaismo a formare una religione separata ed autonoma.

The goal of this volume is fully to embrace the paradigm of the “Paul within Judaism” Perspective not as the conclusion, but as the starting point of our conversation about Paul In my opinion, the potential of such an approach has just begun to be manifested. We have still a long way to go before fully understanding all its monumental implications. In order to properly locate Paul the Jew within the diverse world of Second Temple Judaism, we need, first of all, to establish a better communication between New Testament scholars and Second Temple specialists—two fields of studies that, to date, have remained too distant and deaf to each other. No much will be accomplished as long as Pauline specialists, NT scholars and theologians discuss Paul among themselves and Second Temple specialists refutes to be engaged in any conversation on Paul. The future of Pauline studies is first of all in filling this gap.

Chapter 2 - PAUL WITHIN JUDAISM Paul “the Convert”? 


A major tenant of the traditional interpretation of Paul is “a perception of Paul and his communities as something other than Judaism” (Nanos, p.15). As a “convert” Paul was transformed into “an ex- or even anti-Jew; indeed, into the founder of gentile Christianity”. (Paula Although downplaying the traditional derogatory view of Judaism, the New Perspective has not abandoned the supercessionist model, from E.P. Sanders (“this is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism; it is not Christianity, 552) to N.T. Wright (“Being a Jew was no longer Paul’s basic identity”, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 1436).

“Paul lived his life entirely within his native Judaism.” Only in later Christian tradition “Paul will be transformed into a “convert”, an ex- or even anti-Jew; indeed, into the founder of gentile Christianity”. (Paula As in the case of Jesus, the problem of Paul is not whether he was a Jew or not, but what kind of Jew he was, because in the diverse world of Second Temple Judaism, there were many different ways of being a Jew.5 << “Paul had no sense of his being something other than a Jew… He had no sense that he was abandoning Judaism” (Sandmel, 21) From Paul’s own standpoint, he has remained completely within Judaism” (63). For Sandmel however this was simply Paul’s personal perception, since he did abandon Judaism. Paul did not intend to abandon Judaism, even though he did. Anything for Sandmel was a consequence of “Paul’s personal difficulties with the Law [which] antedate[d] his conversion, rather than follow it” (28)>>

The Pauline Letters and the Acts of Apostle offer some information about Paul's life before he joined the Jesus movement. Paul was a Jew, "from the tribe of Benjamin" (Rom 11:1; Phil 3:5). He lived in the Diaspora, as a native and citizen of Tarsus, the capital city in the Roman province of Cilicia (Acts 9:11; 21:39; 22:3). In the Acts, Paul repeatedly boasts his status of Roman citizen, which granted him privileges and the protection of the Roman Law (Acts 16; 22), and claims that he inherited Roman citizenship from his father ("I was born a citizen," Acts 22:28).

As usual among Jews in the Diaspora, Paul was known by his Hebrew name "Saul" (אוּלאוּל שָׁ) and his Greek name Paulos (Παῦλος; Lat. Paulus).

Born and raised into a Jewish family, since his childhood Paul was presumably a member of the local Jewish community and was instructed in the reading of the Bible in Greek (and Hebrew?). He was certainly fluent in both Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek. It seems likely from his writings that he also received some kind of Greek rhetorical education, but no specific reference to it is made in ancient sources.

In the diverse world of Second Temple Judaism, it is relevant to understand what kind of Jew Paul was, as there were many different ways of being a Jew. Paul calls himself "a Pharisee" (Phil 3:5) and so he does repeatedly in the Acts, where it is also claimed that he lived in Jerusalem and was a pupil of Gamaliel.

Philippians (3:4-6) provides a sort of resume of Paul's early life. Paul refers to himself as being "circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; [6] as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless." Acts abruptly introduces Paul as an enemy of the Church, in sharp contrast with the example of the first martyr Stephen. Paul "approved" the killing of Stephen and harassed members of the early Jesus movement, serving "out of zeal" the Sadducean high priests (Annas and Caiaphas?). Paul in particular is described as a protagonist of the persecution against the church in Jerusalem that led the Hellenists to be "scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria." The brief narrative also includes a reference to the Burial of Stephen. In several instances in his own letters Paul openly refers to his persecutory actions against the members of the Jesus movement before his "conversion".

Paul was a Pharisee (see Paul's Early Life). His claim that his persecution came "out of zeal", seems to indicate that Paul the Pharisee was attracted by the teachings of the Zealots and joined the High Priests, i.e. the Sadducees, in their campaign against the most radical members of the Jesus movement.

It should be noted, however, that the persecution by Paul did not target all members of the Jesus movement but only the Christian-Hellenistic party led by Stephen, which according to Acts 7 was charged of promoting radical views about the Jerusalem Temple and observance to the Torah. The "Hebrews" of the Jesus movement were exempted; Acts 5:34-39 claims that Gamaliel played an decisive role in protecting the apostles from the wrath of the Sadducees after the death of Jesus. Paul did not act in complete contrast with the position of his teacher Gamaliel.

Paul was then sent to Damascus to investigate the whereabouts of the Christians there. It was during his voyage to Damascus, that something happened to change radically his attitude toward the Jesus movement.

According to his own words, Paul was educated as a Pharisee. The idea that he abandoned Judaism when he “converted” to the Jesus movement is simply anachronistic. Conversion as an experience of radical abandonment of one’s religious and ethical identity was indeed known in antiquity (as attested in Joseph and Aseneth, and in the works of Philo).

In the ancient society, so much defined by ethnic boundaries conversion was a

“A proselyte offended patriotic pagans complained, turned his back on family, on ancestral customs, and on the gods” (Paula 68). Tacitus despises proselytes as the first lesson they receive is “to despise the gods, to disown their own country and to regard their parents, children, and brothers as of little account” (Hist V.5.1, 2). Joseph and Asenth shows that this is exactly what was expected from a convert. Resented by their own people, converts were not easily welcomed in their new family, either. as Philo shows:

In addition to examples of non-Jews who converted to Judaism, in ancient sources we have examples of Jews who "removed the marks of circumcision and abandoned the holy covenant. They joined with the Gentiles" (1 Mac 1:15). But this was not the experience of Paul. Christianity at his time was a Jewish messianic movement, not a separate religion. Paul, who was born and raised a Jew, remained such after his “conversion”; nothing changed in his religious, ethical and cultural identity. What changed, however, was his view of Judaism. “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I” (2 Cor 11:22-23)

Nothing changed in Paul if not his awareness of the identity of the Messiah.

“believing that Jesus was the Messiah and affiliating with other Jews who shared that convinctiobn involved making a choice between different groups of Jews, but the choices were within Judaism, they did not signify leaving the practice of a Jewish way of life” (Nanos, 32)

A radical move

“The model of a conversion within a religious tradition is clearly more appropriate than any other” (Gager 25). In describing his experience not as a “prophetic call,” but as a “heavenly revelation,” Paul himself indicated the radicalness of the event. Paul did not abandon Judaism, but “moved” from one variety of Judaism to another. With Alan Segal, I would agree that “Paul was a Pharisaic Jew who converted to a new apocalyptic, Jewish sect.”6 In no way should we downplay the relevance of the event. It was a move within Judaism, and yet, a radical move that reoriented Paul’s entire life and worldview. If, today, a Reform Rabbi became an ultraorthodox Jew, or vice versa, we would also describe such an experience in terms of “conversion.” Likewise, Paul’s conversion should be understood not as a chapter in the parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism, but as an occurrence in the context of the diversity of Second Temple Judaism.

Note: Replacing the conversion with a “call” to be the apostle of Gentiles however misses the point. Paul will become the apostle of Gentiles only many years later. The revelation he received made him not the apostle of gentiles but a follower of Jesus.

Christianity did not exist yet as a separate religion from Judaism. The Jesus movement however already existed as a distinctive group within Judaism. The first (Jewish) members of the new movement came from other Jewish groups. In the Acts of the Apostle we notice the tendency to continue to identify members of the Jesus movement according to their former affiliation. The Hellenists (like Stephen and his companions) as opposed to the Hebrews are those who came from Hellenistic-Jewish communities. Acts defines “Pharisees” those “followers of Jesus” who at the Council of Jerusalem. They interestingly Paul is not reckoned among them, but among their most strenuous opponents It is true that both in his letters Paul and in Acts Paul refers to himself as a Pharisee especially in relation to the doctrine of resurrection. Modern scholars have then highlighted the Pharisaic elements in Paul’s theology. Paul was and remained a Jew, and should never be labeled as a former Jew. However, the Paul’s major commitment is with the Jesus movement. Which justifies his definition as a “former” Pharisee.

certainly Pharisees who had joined

Paul the Jesus Follower Paul was a Pharisee who joined the early Jesus movement. Before being known as the apostle of the gentiles, Paul became a member of the Jesus movement, and then, characterized his apostolate within the Jesus movement as having a particular emphasis on the mission to gentiles. Before Paul the apostle of the gentiles, there was Paul “the Jesus follower.” Any inquiry about Paul cannot, therefore, avoid the question of what the early Jesus movement was about in the context of Second Temple Judaism and what it meant for a Jew like Paul to join the Jesus movement. We all agree that, at its inception, Christianity was a Jewish messianic movement, but what does that mean exactly? It would be simplistic to reduce the early “Christian” message to a generic announcement about the imminent coming of the kingdom of God and about Jesus as the expected Messiah. And it would be simplistic to imagine Paul as simply a Pharisee to whom the name of the future Messiah was revealed and who now believed himself to be living at the end of times.

THE APOCALYPTIC PAUL Scholars of the “Paul within Judaism” perspective have focused their attention especially on the covenantal implications of Paul’s message for the inclusion of gentiles.

There is a growing attention among scholars on the apocalyptic framework of Paul’s thought. As Paula Fredriksen has said, Paul lived in “a Jewish world incandescent with apocalyptic hopes” (Fredriksen, p.xii). It was Paul’s firm belief that his times were history’s final hour. To the Thessalonians Paul repeats his belief that “we who are alive” will experience “the coming of the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:15-17). Every day that passes, the end is closer: “You know what hour it is, how it is full time now to awake from sleep. Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand!” (Rom 13:11-12). Yet, the eschatological expectations about the end of time, the coming of the Messiah and the inclusion of non-Jews are not enough to explain all aspects of Paul’s apocalyptic thought. As all specialists (Collins, Nickelsburg, Sacchi, etc.) have highlighted, apocalypticism was a much more complex word-view in Second Temple Judaism. First of all, it had something to do with the idea of the superhuman origin of evil. Eschatology was a product of protology. We are unfortunately so much influenced by later Christian speculations on the “original sin” by Augustine and Luther that we may not willing to recognize the Second Temple Jewish roots of such a concept by fear of transferring back “Christian” ideas on ancient Jewish sources. From texts like 1 Enoch, Jubilees and 4 Ezra, however, we know that in Second Temple Jewish apocalyptic circles there was a heated debate about the origin of evil that some saw not as a consequence of God’s will or human transgressions but attributed to superhuman powers. <On Paul and The Devil: see Derek R. Brown. “The God of This Age: Satan in the Churches and Letters of the Apostle Paul,” PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2011.>

The letters of Paul are rife with references to evil powers and figures, including “principalities” (a)rxai/), “powers” (duna&meij), “authorities” (e0cousi/ai), angels (a!ggeloi), “rulers” (oi9 a!rxontej), “elemental spirits” (ta_ stoixei=a), demons (ta_ daimo&nia), and Satan (o( satana~j).

Paul mentioned Satan in several of his epistles [Rom 16:20; 1 Cor 5:5; 7:5; 2 Cor 2:11; 4:4; 6:15; 11:14; 12:7; 1 Thess 2:18; 3:5], often in the context of temptation (1 Cor 7:5; 2 Cor 2:11) and spiritual conflict (Rom 16:20; 1 Cor 5:5; 2 Cor 12:7; Eph 4:27; 6:11; 1 Thess 2:18). [He usually refer to the Devl as “Satanas” and in one occurrence as Beliar (2 Cor 6:15).] Paul call Satan “the god of this age” (2 Cor 4:4) and announce that “Soon the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet” (Rom 16:20). In view of 1 Thess 2:18–3:5 and 2 Cor 4:4, Paul’s notion of Satan apparently included his belief that Satan specifically opposed his work as a pioneer missionary and an apostle called to preach the gospel and establish communities of faith. Many scholars (starting from F.C. Bauer) have downplayed these references and the apocalyptic connection between Satan and sin, fail to take seriously the implications of Paul’s references to Satan for the apostle’s wider theology. Only a few scholars, from Otto Everling’s 1888 volume, Die paulinische Angelologie und Dämonologie to J. Christiaan Beker’s Paul the Apostle and Richard Bell’s Deliver us from Evil: Interpreting the Redemption from the Power of Satan in New Testament Theology [WUNT 216; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007], have taken more seriously the Jewish apocalyptic worldview of Paul. one of Paul’s boldest appellations for Satan, “the god of this age” (2 Cor 4:4), reveals a strong dualistic framework similar to that of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition

The Devil and the Serpent: The clearest NT example of Satan’s identification with the serpent of Gen 3 is found in the book of Revelation (Rev 12:9; cf. 12:14, 15; 20:2). In Rom 16:20a Paul seems to allude to the eschatological defeat of Satan by echoing Gen 3:15: “the God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet.” Paul’s reference to the “crushing” of Satan, it is often claimed, echoes God’s cursing of the serpent and promise that Eve’s offspring will “bruise” (MT: Pw#$; LXX: thre/w) the serpent. See the Parables of Enoch. See also 2 Cor 11:3

Paul finds himself at the juncture of the two ages, a unique moment in history in which the powers of evil have, in one sense, already been defeated through the Christ event and thereby “disarmed” of their full power, but in another sense endure in the present age with residual, but deleterious power against the people of God. (p.75) Although, for Paul, Satan and evil powers have been judged in Jesus’ death and resurrection and will be ultimately defeated in the eschaton, such forces remain at work in the present age. (p79). Satan is still operating as a Tempter.

The idea of the Messiah as the forgiver on earth makes perfect sense as a development of the ancient Enochic apocalyptic tradition. The apocalyptic “counternarrative” of 1 Enoch centered on the collapse of the creative order by a cosmic rebellion (the oath and the actions of the fallen angels): “The whole earth has been corrupted by Azazel’s teaching of his [own] actions; and write upon him all sin” (1 En. 10:8). It was this cosmic rebellion that produced the catastrophe of the flood, but also the need for a new creation. The Enochic view of the origin of evil had profound implications in the development of Second Temple Jewish thought. The idea of the “end of times” is today so much ingrained in the Jewish and Christian traditions to make it difficult even to imagine a time when it was not, and to fully comprehend its revolutionary impact when it first emerged. In the words of Genesis, nothing is more perfect than the perfect world, which God himself saw and praised as “very good” (Gen. 1:31). Nobody would change something that “works,” unless something went terribly wrong. In apocalyptic thought, eschatology is always the product of protology. The problem of Enochic Judaism with the Mosaic law was also the product of protology. It did not come from a direct criticism of the law, but from the recognition that the angelic rebellion had made it difficult for people to follow any laws (including the Mosaic Torah) in a universe now disrupted by the presence of superhuman evil. The problem wasnot the Torah itself, but the incapability of human beings to do good deeds, which affects the human relationship with the Mosaic Torah. The shift of focus was not primarily from Moses to Enoch, but from the trust in human responsibility to the drama of human culpability. While at the center of the Mosaic Torah was the human responsibility to follow God’s laws, at the center of Enochic Judaism was now a paradigm of the victimization of all humankind. This is the reason it would be incorrect to talk of Enochic Judaism as a form of Judaism “against” or “without” the Torah. Enochic Judaism was not “competing wisdom,” but more properly, a “theology of complaint.” There was no alternative Enochic halakah for this world, no Enochic purity code, no Enochic Torah: every hope of redemption was postponed to the end of times. The Enochians were not competing with Moses—they were merely complaining. In the Enochic Book of Dreams, the chosen people of Israel are promised a future redemption in the world to come, but in this world, Israel is affected by the spread of evil with no divine protection, as are all other nations. The Enochic view had disturbing implications for the self- understanding of the Jewish people as the people of the covenant. It generated a heated debate within Judaism about the origin and nature of evil.7 Many (like the Pharisees and the Sadducees) rejected the very idea of the superhuman origin of evil; some explored other paths in order to save human freedom and God’s omnipotence—paths that led to alternative solutions, from the cor malignum of 4 Ezra to the rabbinic yetzer hara‘. Even within apocalyptic circles, there were competing theologies. In the mid-second century BCE, the book of Jubilees reacted against this demise of the covenantal relation with God by creating an effective synthesis between Enoch and Moses that most scholars see as the foundation of the Essene movement. While maintaining the Enochic frame of corruption and decay, Jubilees reinterpreted the covenant as the “medicine” provided by God to spare the chosen people from the power of evil. The merging of Mosaic and Enochic traditions redefined a space where the people of Israel could now live, protected from the evilness of the world under the boundaries of an alternative halakah as long as they remained faithful to the imposed rules. The covenant was restored as the prerequisite for salvation. In this respect, as Collins says, “Jubilees, which retells the stories of Genesis from a distinctly Mosaic perspective, with explicit halachic interests,” stood “in striking contrast” to Enochic tradition.8 Even more radically, the Community Rule would explore predestination as a way to neutralize God’s loss of control of the created world and restore God’s omnipotence.9 Enochic Judaism remained faithful to its own premises (Jews and gentiles are equally affected by evil), but was not insensitive to the criticism of having given too much power to evil, thereby dramatically reducing humanity’s chances of being saved. The later Enochic tradition tried to solve the problem by following a different path, a path that led them to address the problem of forgiveness of sins.

As a result of his “conversion,” Paul did not abandon Judaism, but switched his allegiance from one form to another of Second Temple Judaism. He fully embraced the apocalyptic worldview and the claim that Jesus the Messiah had already come (and would return at the end of times as the final judge). This included not only the believe that the Messiah had already come, but also and foremost the explanation of why the Messiah had come before the end. The early followers of Jesus had an answer: Jesus did not come simply to reveal his name and identity. Jesus came as “the Son of Man who has the authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2 and parallels).