What if Paul wasn't a Jew

[Contarini]

Not that he was a roman. But that he was not well versed in Torah. That he did not come from a line of Pharisees. And that he did not study under Gamiel (sp?).

If the book of Acts is to be believed, Paul certainly was a Roman (in the sense of being a Roman citizen–obviously no one says that he was a native of the city of Rome or that he was ethnically Italian or a native Latin-speaker).

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

And look at your last quote from Corinthians. It sounds like he’s saying, I passed myself off as a Jew in order to convince the Jews of my argument." That he is refering to “the Jews” as if they are a people outside of him is suspect.

No, I think he’s referring to them as a people distinct from the Gentiles, to whom he is about to allude in the next verse. Also, many of his readers would have been Gentiles.

Edwin

 

[TOME]

I think if you study Acts (realizing it may not be the most historically accurate document ever written) and all the writings of Paul it would be reasonable to say he was a Jew, at least a Jew of the Diaspora.

As for Acts, and also Paul’s own writings, it is pretty clear that he was a persecutor of the followers of Jesus before his conversion, and by his own admission a participant of the myterdom of Stephen, both acts that were clearly jewish in nature, that is gentiles wouldn’t have been bothered with those activities the way Paul was.

Also from Acts, there was the insistance by James that Paul participate in the Temple Worship, and act that was clearly meant for Jews alone. Also, if we are to believe Flavius Josephus, James was a very strict and devote Jew, thus James would never have insisted that Paul go to the Temple if Paul wasn’t a Jew.

It could be argued reasonably that Paul may have stretch that truth about his education because he only cites his studying under Gamiel once, however, if Acts is to be believed, Paul was accepted, initially, and allowed to address the members of the synagogues of the towns he first approached. Unless he was a Jew this would have been highly improbable if not impossible. Also, what I find interesting is if you read Paul’s letters and what he is quoted as have said in Acts, Paul does use a technique of argumentation that was very pharisical in its approach in that he would use scriptural passages known to all then approach the common conception in a whole new light (consider his argument that the gentiles were the true sons of Abraham. The argument was rejected by most Jews, still the method of was very pharisical)

Also, one can point to the Council of Jerusalem and its compromise on the gentile converts to Christianity. The actual decree was not unique to the Church, rather it was rooted in the Book of Leviticus and was pretty much the way the Jews delt with the gentiles who were attracted to the Jewish faith, participated to the degree allowed in the synagogue worship but didnot convert to the Jewish Faith. This seems to be the reason why this compromised was readily accepted by the council. Granted, it could be argued that this shows that Paul was a gentile who fell into this category, however, again one must weigh in the other peices of evidence I presented above.

And, I think that if you read Paul’s letter to the Romans, one can find more than a superficial understanding of the Jewish faith at that time. It should also be pointed out that some of the criticism of Paul and his lack of knowledge of the Jewish Law and scriptures is based of a theological development that came after the fall of the Temple in 70 AD and is based on the Jewiah theological development from Jamnia and other centers of learning that came after Paul.

Finally, I think it should really be stressed that what was most important for Paul and what had the ultimate influence on him was his personal experience of the Resurrected Christ. I think this experience made all his earlier experience and knowledge, if not irrelevant then superfluous although I might be overstating this point.

 

[Valke2]

Also, one can point to the Council of Jerusalem and its compromise on the gentile converts to Christianity. The actual decree was not unique to the Church, rather it was rooted in the Book of Leviticus and was pretty much the way the Jews delt with the gentiles who were attracted to the Jewish faith, participated to the degree allowed in the synagogue worship but didnot convert to the Jewish Faith. This seems to be the reason why this compromised was readily accepted by the council. Granted, it could be argued that this shows that Paul was a gentile who fell into this category, however, again one must weigh in the other peices of evidence I presented above.

I don’t think this shows Paul was a gentile. I do think it was a decision to make a radical break from Judaism. THere is no question that if following Jesus were to remain part of Judaism at the time, then Gentiles who wanted to worship would have to convert to Judaism. This would involve accepting the commandments, the deal breaker of which was apparently submitting to circumcision. There is a big difference between treating strangers interested in Judaism and recruiting strangers into Judaism.

 

[Golf_Nut]

TOME, thanks for your very informative post!

 

[Ghosty]

I don’t think this shows Paul was a gentile. I do think it was a decision to make a radical break from Judaism. THere is no question that if following Jesus were to remain part of Judaism at the time, then Gentiles who wanted to worship would have to convert to Judaism. This would involve accepting the commandments, the deal breaker of which was apparently submitting to circumcision. There is a big difference between treating strangers interested in Judaism and recruiting strangers into Judaism.

I’ve heard from not a few rabbis that one understanding of the coming of the Messiah is that all the “seperative” laws would no longer be followed, and that even many of the Jewish feasts except for Passover would cease to be practiced.

I don’t know where this understanding comes from, but I’ve heard it and read it from a number of Jewish sources. It’s not a wholly Christian invention. This makes sense too, if you consider that many of the Laws are designed to keep Jews distinct from Gentiles, a distinction that will no longer exist after the coming of the Messiah. This makes the behavior of the Jewish Apostles rather sensical given that they clearly believed Jesus was the Messiah.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Valke2]

I’ve heard from not a few rabbis that one understanding of the coming of the Messiah is that all the “seperative” laws would no longer be followed, and that even many of the Jewish feasts except for Passover would cease to be practiced.

I don’t know where this understanding comes from, but I’ve heard it and read it from a number of Jewish sources. It’s not a wholly Christian invention. This makes sense too, if you consider that many of the Laws are designed to keep Jews distinct from Gentiles, a distinction that will no longer exist after the coming of the Messiah. This makes the behavior of the Jewish Apostles rather sensical given that they clearly believed Jesus was the Messiah.

Peace and God bless!

Yes, that’s true. I’m not sure how that contradicts what I had said though.

 

[Valke2]

My understanding is that there was a discussion as to whether converts would be required to undergo circumcision. And that it was never questioned that Jews would continue to be circumcised and be subject to the commandments. If this is so, then the all commandments fulfilled with Jesus argument could not have been the reason behind the original decision.

 

[Nita]

Happy All Saints day to all,

I was just wondering if St. Paul, looking down on us from heaven, is having a bit of a chuckle over all this .

Nita

 

[TOME]

Nita, from what I read of and about St. Paul, right now I think he is busy looking for a pen and some paper (and perhaps a scribe or two) to write us yet another letter to clarify his positions.

 

[inJESUS]

lol guys i LOVE St. Paul

 

[Ora_et_Labora_1]

See, what comes to my mind as a Jew when I read those quotes is “Methinks he doeth protest too much.” And look at your last quote from Corinthians. It sounds like he’s saying, I passed myself off as a Jew in order to convince the Jews of my argument." That he is refering to “the Jews” as if they are a people outside of him is suspect.

Sorry to be resurecting an old thread, but I thought I’d just add my two cents, seeing has how no one mentioned a passage from the NT when addressing this. I don’t recall if it is in the Acts or in one of the Epistles, but I do remember that Paul makes reference to circumcising some of his (first?) pagan converts, and justifying it not as though they are obliged to fulfil the “old” law, but rather so as not to cause scandal with the Jewish Christians. Also, that quote of becoming a Jew to the Jews is either followed or preceeded by a vrse which says that he became everything to all so that a few might be saved.

Well, that’s my 2 cents. Hope it helps.

 

[YADA]

Obviously the NT Church did rely on the OT, and as early as 2 Peter we find parts of the NT being treated in the same way. However, note that I was talking about the Fathers. By their time the entire canon *was *formulated and was there to be relied on–as it is to this day!

Edwin

Well, not exactly, many “Fathers” existed before the NT Canon was codified. In fact, some Fathers lived before the NT writings were written … After all, Peter was teaching before his letters were written down …

“By thier time” …Its hard to determine what date is meant … 395 AD ?

Thesselonian’s circa 70 AD …

The New Testament Canon flows from the Church … the Church does not flow from the Canon …

Scripture is not the sole source nor ultimate ‘authority’ … I believe that is the crux the poster was alluding to … not that the Church does not use, refer to, appeal to … The Church is the organization that collected [NT], preserved and protected [OT & NE], and gifted the world with what is called “the Bible” … as an aid to spreading the “Good News of Salvation in Christ Jesus”

 

[patrick457]

Let me do a bit here:

Then there is his assertion that he knew Hebrew. Something most jews in 1st century CE did not know. But it seems clear Paul could not read Hebrew.

That reminds me. Whenever the New Testament (or early Christian writers) talks about “Hebrew”, there is fairly a good chance that they’re actually talking about Judean Aramaic, the lingua franca of many Palestinian Jews of the period – i.e. it is called ‘Hebrew’ because at that time, it is the native tongue of many Hebrews.

After all, it is believed that ‘real’ Hebrew at this time was mostly used for scholarly or religious purposes, though some have already presented hypotheses that Hebrew actually continued to be a spoken tongue through the early centuries AD/CE in some communities. It would not be too much of a stretch to say Paul knew Aramaic – since it is the mother tongue of many Jews in the Holy Land he would have met, or (if Hebrew actually continued to be a living language) Hebrew.

WHenever he cites from the Bible, he is clearly doing so from the Septuagint. The Septuagint does not always adhere to the original Hebrew meaning.

Paul was not the only one who does this; when Jesus is described by the New Testament as quoting from the Hebrew Bible, the quotations that are given also correlate with the Septuagint more than the Masoretic.

Most scholars suggest that the New Testament authors just most likely used an edition of the Septuagint, rather than translate a Hebrew (or Aramaic) source.

Perhaps we can say the same for Paul; since he mostly writes to communities with Hellenistic Jewish or gentile backgrounds, he would have just used the Septuagint for convenience, since his target audience would have been more familiar with it.

The Septuagint enjoyed widespread use in the Hellenistic Jewish diaspora and even in Jerusalem (which was by this time a cosmopolitan, and therefore Greek-speaking town) during the 1st century. Many Jewish authors, aside from the NT writers (such as Philo and Josephus) used the translation. It was in fact only in the 2nd century that several factors led most Jews to abandon use of the Septuagint. The earliest gentile Christians of necessity used it, as it was at the time the only Greek version of the bible, and most, if not all, of these early non-Jewish Christians could not read Hebrew. The association of the Septuagint with a rival religion may have rendered it suspect in the eyes of the newer generation of Jews and Jewish scholars.

Perhaps more importantly, Greek declined among most Jews after most of them fled from the Greek-speaking eastern Roman Empire into the Aramaic-speaking Persian Empire when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. Instead, they used Hebrew/Aramaic Targums later compiled by the Masoretes; and authoritative Aramaic translations, such as those of Onkelos and Rabbi Yonathan ben Uziel.

The translation only began to lose Jewish sanction after differences between it and contemporary Hebrew scriptures were discovered. Even Greek-speaking Jews — such as those remaining in Palestine — tended less to the Septuagint, preferring other Jewish versions in Greek, such as that of Aquila or Symmachus or Theodotion, which seemed to be more concordant with contemporary Hebrew texts.

The discovery of many fragments in the Dead Sea scrolls that agree with the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic Text proved that many of the variants in Greek were also present in early Semitic manuscripts. Therefore, the most widely accepted view today is that the original Septuagint provided a reasonably accurate record of an early Semitic textual variant, now lost, that differed from the ancestors of the Masoretic text, contrary to the earlier assumption that the Septuagint was a corrupt translation of the Hebrew (which is usually identified as synonymous with the Masoretic Text). We can presume that either:

1.) Paul and the other NT writers used the Septuagint (or did their own paraphrases) for convenience, in respect for their target audience; or
2.) Paul and the other NT writers relied on textual variants of the Tanakh more closer to that represented by the LXX rather than the Masoretic.