Talk:Gabriele Boccaccini (b.1958), Italian-American scholar
Chapter 1 -- Introduction
[Paul the Hater]
In an age of resurgent religious intolerance, Jews, Christians and Muslims are compelled to 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 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 grace has generated hatred
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, if not through the individual experience of conversion and rejection of their own cultural, religious and ethnic identity.
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).
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.