PAUL AND JUDAISM: THE ISSUE OF COVENANT
Wilken, Robert L.
BOOKS PAUL AND JUDAISM: THE ISSUE OF COVENANT ROBERT L. WILKEN P|II| lind PgI~S||Nt41N toulalam E. P. SANDERS Fortress Press, $25 [627 pp.] Most of the books of the New Testament were...
...Why Should faith be the antinomy of law...
...Judaism exhibRs a different religion pattern from Christianity, but, like Christianity, Judaism begins with the idea of divine initiative, with grace...
...Commonweal: 665 The solution preceded the problem, the gospel preceded the Law...
...In the work of twentieth century ,New Testamer~t scholars, Judaism is presented as an inadequate and inferior religion...
...By the time Sanders turns to Paul (on p. 431) it is apparent how much he has altered the scenery of first century Judaism, thereby forcing a reconsideration of Paul's polemic against Judaism...
...Religious ideas take on different significance as they are filtered through distinctive communities...
...Sanders's argument, however, is not that one should use only the rabbinic sources in Hebrew, but that scholars should use all the sources...
...For a Jew, assuming membership in a covenant people, the religious question takes the form: how do I obey the God who chose me, redeemed me, and made a covenant with me...
...The Jew could not hope to have a genuine relation with God because his religion was legalistic, based on human merit and the observance of arcane laws...
...He concludes that "covenantal nomism was pervasive in Palestine before 70...
...The rabbis, then, are concerned about obedience, duty, ritual actions, law...
...This is not to say there was no rationale to the approach...
...Whether the similarities are significant enough to alter Sanders's arguments about the Jewish "pattern of religion" I doubt, but there do seem to be gradations between the Judaism of the rabbis, the various sectarian groups within first century Judaism, and the Jews who became Christians...
...Scholars have not only sided with Paul's polemic against Jewish "legalism" (a point amply documented by Sanders), but they have used Paul's polemic against Judaism to "define the Judaism which is then contrasted with Paul's thought...
...What is missing is a discussion of the shape and form of the various communities which produced the literature...
...The question does arise in the case of proselytes, but for most Jews a person is born into the covenant and remains in it as long as he does not willfully separate from it...
...They rest on one thing: Paul's experience of Christ...
...It exhibited, in Troeltsch's term, "secttype" characteristics: admission was voluntary and selective, standards of behavior were rigorous, and it set itself against the ruling authorities and institutions, e.g., the temple...
...But the people said to hin~: Have you done anything good for Us that you should rule over us...
...However one deals with these questions, they are provoked by this fresh and original work...
...It would be somewhat similar to constructing a picture of early Christianity by systematically ignoring the New Testament...
...And when they said to Him...
...Judaism taught a way of life marked by obligation, work, righteousness, fear, and its God was distant, aloof, inaccessible...
...Covenantal nomism would, it seems, have a different meaning to the Jew living a,t Qu:mran than it had to the farmer in Galilee who went to the synagogue on Sabbath and said his prayers during the week...
...Later tradition often reworked earlier sources to conform to later developments and much that was Jewish at the time of Paul was forgotten or deliberately discarded by later generations...
...Then He said to them: I am to be your king...
...Either the theology of the Rabbis must be wrong, its conception of God debasing, its leading motives materialistic and coarse, and its teachers lacking in enthusiasm and spirituality, or the Apostle to the Gentiles is quite unintelligible...
...He built the city wall for them, he brought in the water supply for them, and he fought their battles...
...It is commonly assumed that Paul turned to Christ because of the onerous demands of the law, demands which he (and others) could not keep and which only exposed his sinfulness...
...This resulted in the anomalous situation that the scholarly portrait of Judaism was based on the very sources Jews did not recognize...
...Likewise, God...
...Traditionally Christians have interpreted the New Testament in the light of the Old Testament (Taanach), the latest book of which was written approximately two hundred years before the beginning of Christianity...
...In recent years, however, it has become commonplace among scholars to begin study of the New Testament with Jewish religion and Jewish life as it is exhibited not in ancient Israel but in the history of the Jews during the period of the Second Commonwealth and immediately after the destruction of the second temple in 70 C.E...
...This point has not been lost on Jewish scholars...
...No doubt it was precisely because Qumran did not rest on the religious experience of "conversion" that its modification of Judaism was less radical than Paul's, whose followers eventually broke with the parent religion...
...As one presumed "authority" in the field put it: "It is obvious .that such a system does not admit of forgiveness in any spiritual sense of the term...
...The sectarian character of Qumran, based on location (out of the city in the desert) as well as ideology, and the sectarianism of Paul, based on an exclusive religious experience, gave each group similarities which they did not share with the Judaism of the cities and countryside...
...Those who have attempted to construct an alternate view of Judaism based on an independent reading of Jewish sources, notably G. F. Moore, were ignored and sometimes ridiculed...
...It was thus the basic type of religion known by Jesus and pre-supposed by Paul...
...What did he do then...
...For Christians, at least in most of their history, the idea of "people" is a derived notion, not the basis of election...
...By stressing the covenant in Judaism, Sanders forces Christian scholars to reconsider the relation of rabbinic Judaism to classical Judaism, and by stressing the experiential side of Paul he raises many questions which harken back "to the nineteenth century...
...There is much to ponder in this book...
...In Judaism the elect community takes a different form than it does in Christianity because God elected the Jews as a people...
...How could Paul have studied a Midrash such as that cited above and come to such a conclusion...
...13 October 1978:666...
...This book is not a study of New Testament scholarship, however, but of Paul, the Jew who converted to Christianity, and whose writings form a large part of the New Testament (though not as large as one would think since Sanders follows current scholarly orthodoxy, using only Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon, excluding the other epistles as inauthentic as well as the information in Acts...
...rather, he had a revelatory experience of Christ which so transformed his life that nothing he had known before that time could compare to what he had come to know...
...Most of the book is given over to a careful and deliberate analysis of the chief bodies of literature from the period: rabbinic, apocryphal and pseudo-eplgraphical writing from ~he so-called "intertestamontal" period, i.e., the period of the Second Commonwealth, and Qumran...
...In his view, the primary religious category for Judaism is covenant, i.e...
...The commu: nity at Qumran was a "sectarian" community, 5.e., one was not born imo R but chose to become a member...
...It is the most challenging work in New Testament studies to appear in a generation...
...As Sanders ruefully observes, many scholars cannot even look up the passages they cite freely (from secondary works) in their books...
...To what may this be compared...
...the belief that God has elected the Jewish people to be his own and that the covenant is a sign of his enduring relation to them...
...Long ago Solomon Schechter wrote...
...Judaism, like Christianity, is the product of a long historical development, in .the one case leading to "rabbinic Judaism" and the other to "orthodox Christianity...
...2) Uncritical use of the same books to interpret Judaism without examining the sources on wJlich they were supposedly based...
...Paul seldom, if ever, appeals to the theological idea that the Messiah has come as a reason for considering the Law invalid...
...And they said to Him: Yes, yes...
...Nevertheless, argues E. P. Sanders, New Testament scholar at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, the edific~e of New Testament scholarship constructed over the last hundred years is based on a systematic misunderstanding of Judaism...
...Paul is the first truly "experiential" theologian in the history of Christianity, a reason no doubt why many later theologians have preferred interpreting him in theological categories which minimize the experiential basis of his religious claims...
...What the book offers is an interpretation of the texts from the Perspective of religious ideas...
...Sanders's answer to Sehechter's question is elegant in its simplicity: the solution comes before the problem, the discovery of Christ before dissatisfaction with the Law...
...He brought the Israelites out of Egypt, divided the sea for them, sent down the manna for them, 13 October 1978:664 brought up the well for them, brought the quails for them...
...Then when he said to them: May I be your king...
...and God's initiative can be seen in election...
...Why would a Jew wish to be free of the law of a gracious God...
...For the Jew the covenant is always assumed, taken for granted if you will, and Jewish literature is only casually interested in how one becomes a member of the covenant...
...His study is based then on the Mishnab and early Midrashim (Jewish biblical commentaries), the so galled intertestamental literature transmitted chiefly within the Christian church, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and his claim is that they exhibit a common pattern of religion...
...Wilhelm Wrede, it will be recalled, called Paul the "second founder of Christianity...
...Instead Christian scholars turned to Jewish sources written in Greek, many of which had been passed on in translations within the Christian church...
...426) It is indeed an impressive argument and one which will generate much controversy...
...Yes, yes,' He continued: "Now, just as you accepted My reign, you must also accept My decrees" 'Thou shalt not have other gods before me.'" The pattern of religion exhibited in this Midrash and throughout the rab -~ binic writings Sanders calls "covenantal n0mism," by which he means that those who have been made members of the covenant through the prior gracious action of God are expected to assume the obligations and responsibilities which come with this election, namely observance of the law...
...His argument, however, is not simply that this pattern can be found in rabbinic literature but that it is characteristic of all Palestinian Jewish literature (except IV Ezra) from this period...
...To the following: A king who entered a province said to the people: May I be your king...
...What is wrong with the Law is not that its time has come to an end with the advent of the Messianic age, but that the splendor of Christ surpasses all other splendor (2 Corinthians...
...Whatever gain I had," says Paul in Philippians, "I counted as loss . . . because of the surpassing worth of knowing Chutist Jesus my Lord...
...BOOKS PAUL AND JUDAISM: THE ISSUE OF COVENANT ROBERT L. WILKEN P|II| lind PgI~S||Nt41N toulalam E. P. SANDERS Fortress Press, $25 [627 pp.] Most of the books of the New Testament were written by Jews...
...The law, it is said, gave him an awareness of his sin and his need of salvation...
...How such a view of Judaism could establish itself so firmly in New Testament scholarship may seem a mystery to the outsider, but the reasons are" plain enough: 1) Most New Testament scholars, until recently, have been Protestantsand they have projected the Reformation understanding of grace onto the documents of the first century, siding with Paul (Luther) against the Jews (Rome...
...Only God can initiate the covenant, as the following Midrash on Exodus 20 illustrates: "'I Am the Lord Thy God (Ex...
...The great value of the work 'lies in the care Sanders takes in expounding the Jewish sources, many of which are translated into English for the first time and cited at length...
...Scholarly c~ich6s are .passed from one generation of scholars to another, and then enshrined in reference works such as th'e "indispensable" Kittel, a theological dictionary of the vocabulary, of the New Testament...
...The rabbinic writings, on the other hand, speak to Jews living in cities and villages, observant and non-observant, pious as well as languid Jews...
...The questions "what must I do to be saved," or "how is man reconciled to God" do not arise because it is assumed that, as a member of the covenant, one is reconciled to God...
...They said to him: Yes, yes...
...At the level of religious ideas, however, and in response to the caricature of Judaism regnant in most New Testament scholarship, Sanders has made his case...
...There is reason, then, to consult sources which were not preserved in the rabbinic writings, but not reason enough to exclude the rabbinic writings altogether...
...Early Christianity, like the community at Qumran on the Dead Sea, was a sectarian movement within first century Judaism and its language and message can best be understood within the context of Judaism as it was practiced at that time...
...The obligations ~of which the Bible and later Jewish literature speak, the "works" wliich so offend Christian scholars, do not reconcile one to God, nor earn one a place in the covenant...
...What is true of New Testament scholarship in general is even more true of Paul...
...20.2).' Why were the Ten Commandments not said at the beginning of the Torah...
...3) Simple ignorance of the Jewish sources from the period written in Hebrew...
...Paul, by his own admission, had no trouble observing the Law (Philippians 3) and his arguments against the law do not rest on his (or anyone's) inability to keep it...
...A few paragraphs later the same Midrash continues: "I am He whose reign you have taken upon yourselves in Egypt...
...The central religious category for Paul, then, is not justification by grace through faith, but being "in Christ," and it was this "experience" which led to the creation of a pattern of religion distinct from the religion of Palestinian Judaism...
...He fought for them the battle with Amalek...
...Philo the Alexandrian Jew, for 'example, a prime source for first century Judaism, is not even mentioned in the Talmud...
...What prompted his criticism of the Law was not his experience of the Law but his experience of Christ...
...But if this view is correct, Paul's polemic is inexplicable, for he does not seem to have understood the very religion in which he was raised...
...Sanders's broadside against the current state of blew Testament scholarship, a task he undertakes reluctantly, has of course a larger purpose: a fresh interpretation of the religion of Palestinian Judaism and of Paul...
...Paul did not turn to Christ because he could not keep the Law...
...New Testament scholars read classical Hebrew but not the Hebrew of the Mishnah and Midrashim, contemporary Jewish documents...
...The community was defined by birth, by upbringing, in some cases by geography...
Vol. 105 • October 1978 • No. 20
