Part 4 of 4: Paul & The Rest of the NTThe Rev. Dr. Carl Gregg

Housekeeping

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Covenant

• Use “I” statements: speak from your own experience.

• Ask permission before sharing other participants’ stories outside the group.

• Lean-in, lean-back: be conscious of the level of participation that you bring to the conversation. Allow everyone a chance to speak before you speak again.

• You always have permission to “pass.”

Upcoming Classes(Con)text & Intro to Modern Biblical Scholarship

Session 2: Quest for the Historical Paul

Session 3: I Thess, Corinthians, & Galatians

Session 4: Phillippians, Philemon, Romans, Deutero-Paul, faith “of/in” Christ

Session 5: Pastorals, Hebrews, 1 Peter, James, Jude, 2 Peter, Revelation

Session 6: After the Hebrew Bible

2019: Bioethics?

Check-in Q&R

Timeline2000: Abraham and Sarah

1300: Exodus (EGYPT)

1280-1020 Conquest & Settlement

1020-922 United Kingdom

1000: David (monarchy)

922-721 Two Kingdoms

721 Destruction of N. Kingdom of Israel

(ASSYRIA): Ten Lost Tribes

Timeline

721-587 Judah alone

587-539 Babylonian Exile

586/7: Jerusalem destroyed;

begin (BABYLONIAN) exile

539-333 Return & Restoration

539: Return from Exile (PERSIA…Cyrus the Great)

Timeline

333-70 C.E. Judaism & Hellenism

333: Alexander the Great (GREECE—Hellenism)

63 B.C.E. Romans take control of the Middle East

ROME…Greco-Roman

4-6 BCE Birth of Jesus

70 C.E. destruction of Jerusalem Temple — Rabbinical Judaism and Christianity as siblings

Timeline

27-30? CE Public Ministry of Jesus

30? Crucifixion of Jesus

31-32?? Conversion of Paul

34-64 Paul’s Missionary activities

49 1 Thessalonians (earliest surviving Christian writing) 49-62 Paul’s Letters (50s)

64 Death of Paul & Peter

Timeline65-70 Gospel of Mark

80-85 Gospels of Matthew and Luke

80-110 Deutero-Pauline Epistles, Pastoral Epistles, General Epistles

100 Didache

100-130 Rise of Gnosticism

110-120 Gospels of Thomas and Peter

120-140 Shepherd of Hermas, Apocalypse of Peter

130-150 Rise of Marcionites

Genre: mostly letters [compare 3 previous classes]

• Genesis - Kings (DH)

• Rest of Hebrew Bible (including Wisdom Lit)

• Jesus & Gospels

Why Letters?

• If Jesus coming back soon,

• only “immediate literature” needed.

Canonical Order

• 13 total letters/epistles attributed to Paul

• 9 addressed to communities at geographical places (Rom, 1-2 Cor, Gal, Eph, Phil, Col, 1-2 Thess)

• 4 addressed to individuals (1-2 Tim, Titus, Phlm)

Canonical Order• Each collection in descending

order of length (//: Qur’an)

• Hebrews (long assoc. with Paul)

• Catholic Epistles (James, Peter, John, Jude)

• Order of Gal 2:9 [then Jude because Paul didn’t mention him]

• “when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars….”

Scribe

• Pay attention to beginning and ending of letters.

• Was the rest of the letter written by someone else?

• 1 Cor 16:21 I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.

• Gal 6:11 11 See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand!

• II Thess 3:17 17 I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the mark in every letter of mine; it is the way I write.

• Col 4:18 18 I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.

• Rom 16:22 22 I Tertius, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord.

• 1 Pet 5:12 Through Silvanus, whom I consider a faithful brother, I have written this short letter to encourage you and to testify that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.

Scribe

• 300,000 - 400,000 NT variants

• (140,000 words total)

• ~1% are potentially impactful on interpretation

• Where is authority? (“Paper Pope”)

Where is authority?• Liberal/Libertarian turn in

religion (Latin liber = free)

• reason

• experience

• Fear of individual interpreters w/o training (“reading banned books”)

• Or without community of accountability— “practicing safe texts” (you are responsible)

Quest for the Historical Paul

• Born c. 5-10 CE

• during the reign of Emperor Augustus

• Acts 7:58 “Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him [Stephen]; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.”

Quest for the Historical Paul

• Old Age (55 CE)

• Philemon 9 “yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus.”

• written after 55 CE

Quest for the Historical Paul

• Tentmaker

• Acts 18:3 and, because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, and they worked together — by trade they were tentmakers.

Quest for the Historical Paul

• doesn’t use term ‘conversion’

• uses: “calling” or “commission”

• Change or reversal of values — reconsidering the Torah in light of what he now understand God to have done in Jesus.

Quest for the Historical Paul Missionary Journeys

• If you had asked the Paul of the letters, “Which missionary journey are you on now?”, he would not have known what you were talking about.

• Even the Paul of Acts never explicitly delineates three journeys.

• During the year and a half at Corinth & 3 years at Ephesus, no traveling

• 3 journeys are a convenient classification developed by students of Acts—but useful in that sense.

Westar Institute

• Acts vs. Paul – in almost every places where Acts & Paul relate the same event, there are variations

• met twice a year beginning in 2001

• concluded its work in 2011

Westar Institute1. The use of Acts as a source

for history has long needed critical reassessment.

2. Acts was written in the early decades of the second century.

3. The author of Acts used the letters of Paul as sources.

4. Except for the letters of Paul, no other historically reliable source can be identified for Acts.

Westar Institute5. Acts can no longer be

considered an independent source for the life and mission of Paul.

6. Contrary to Acts 1-7, Jerusalem was not the birthplace of Christianity. [“Paul Was Not a Christian”]

7. Acts constructs its story on the model of epic and related literature.

8. The author of Acts created names for characters as storytelling devices. [Theophilus…Stephen = Stephanos = Crown]

Westar Institute

9. Acts constructs its story to fit ideological goals. [creating tradition, not defending it…proto-orthodoxy amidst diversity]

10. Acts is a primary historical source for second century Christianity.

Voting

• Red - likely authentic

• Pink - somewhat likely

• Gray - somewhat unlikely

• Black - unlikely

Christianity Seminar Fall 2016 Ballot Items

• Judaism and Christianity arose in relationship to one another, using the same tools and cultural resources to construct themselves against one another. Fellows: Pink/Associates: Pink

• There is no essential distinctness between Judaism and Christianity before 150 ce. Fellows: Gray/Associates: Pink

• The nations (ethnoi) as well as the loss and erasure of national belonging are integral in the stories of the appearance of Christianity. Fellows: Red/Associates: Red

• The loss of the nation in our stories of the appearance of Christianity is strongly related to the way in which Roman imperial belonging erased local ties and affiliations over time. Fellows: Red/Associates: Red

Christianity Seminar Fall 2016 Ballot Items

• Paul, in Galatians, strategically reforms the Judaism of his day so that everyone, Jew and gentile alike, can adhere to the God of Israel through faith. Fellows: Black/Associates: Black

• Paul, in Galatians, strategically attempts to convince his gentile audience to reject the demands of his opponents and not adopt Torah regulations, especially that of circumcision. Fellows: Red/Associates: Red

• Justin, in his Dialogue with Trypho, is in the business of determining who is a Christian and who is not. Fellows: Black/Associates: Black

• Justin, in his Dialogue with Trypho, uses various strategies to convince Trypho, representative of certain Jews, of the superiority of his reading of scripture to that of Trypho and his teachers. As such, the Dialogue makes apparent how Justin’s readings differ from Trypho’s. Fellows: Red/Associates: Red

Christianity Seminar Fall 2016 Ballot Items

• A vocabulary of “rabbinic Judaism & Christian Judaism” makes much sense of relationships of the many movements and communities in the second century. Fellows: Gray/Associates: Pink

• The second century is generally too early to use the term “Judaism” as definitive for what is happening. Fellows: Red/Associates: Pink

• The second century is generally too early to use the term “Christianity” as definitive for what is happening. Fellows: Red/Associates: Red

• Terms allied with the word “Israel,” used not just as a geographical term but as a metaphor of belonging, work well for the complications of second century identities and relationships. Fellows: Pink/Associates: Red

Christianity Seminar Fall 2016 Ballot Items

• The artful hiddenness of powerful textual portraits of loss, trauma, and violence allowed many early Christ-related texts to think and feel deeply about their circumstances without putting their writers and readers in trouble with the Roman rulers. Fellows: Pink/Associates: Red

• Making sense of the violence the first and second centuries experienced was more important than dogmatic concerns to the ancient writers and readers associated with Israel and Jesus. Fellows: Gray/Associates: Pink

• “The ways modernity has covered over the deep social and interior ancient work on how to live with heartache and torture” caricatures central meanings of second-century traditions of Israel and Jesus. Fellows: Pink/Associates: Pink

• The second century range of Jesus-related texts do not reflect a consensus or common message about violence, but share a strong interest in addressing violence and its effects. Fellows: Red/Associates: Red

Christianity Seminar in Spring 2017: Christian Identity Formation

• Christians were known by non-adherents for their willingness to embrace death and suffering on behalf of their god. Fellows: Pink/Associates: Pink.

• Christian emphasis on individual suffering reflects a broad political, social, and religious shift in Roman culture in the second century. Fellows: Pink/Associates: Gray

• Christians forged a trans-empire self-identity by emphasizing the resurrection (and thus the permanence) of the material body. Fellows: Gray/Associates: Pink

• The process of Christian self-identity became an empire-wide response to a cultural shift in the Roman judicial system in which non-elite bodies were rendered vulnerable to extreme punishments and gruesome deaths. Fellows: Pink/Associates: Gray

Christianity Seminar in Spring 2017: Christian Identity Formation

• Although Paul emphasizes his own and Christ’s suffering, there is no direct line of thinking from Paul to later Christian self-identification with suffering. Fellows: Pink/Associates: Pink

• In the second century and beyond, Christ adherents’ self-identification with suffering (real or imagined) takes place in a communal identification as “Christian.” Fellows: Pink/Associates: Pink

• “Christian” is only one of any number of (sometimes competing) self-identities that a particular Christ adherent could claim. Fellows: Red/Associates: Red.

• Christianity was not “special” or “different” in its discursive practices of identity formation within the Roman empire, but was part of a broader cultural shift. Fellows: Red/Associates: Pink

Christianity Seminar in Spring 2017: Contested Authority of Paul in 2nd c.

• Paul was a major influence on the Jesus movement in its first hundred years. Fellows: Gray/Associates: Gray

• Paul was a relatively marginal figure in the Jesus movement in its first hundred years. Fellows: Pink/Associates: Pink

• Other than Marcion, even those writers who cite Paul in the second century are not particularly interested in Paul’s ideas. Fellows: Pink/Associates: Red

• Paul was more widely remembered as a heroic community founder than as a significant contributor to the ideology of Jesus movements. Fellows: Red/Associates: Pink

Christianity Seminar in Spring 2017: Contested Authority of Paul in 2nd c.

• The use of Paul among non-Marcionite Christians at the end of the second century presupposes a continuous tradition of wide authority for Paul stretching back to his own time. Fellows: Black/Associates: Black

• A series of traumas for Jewish Christians/Christian Jews culminated in the mid-second century separation of Christian Gentile communities, and the latter’s need to resuscitate Paul as a major authority figure. Fellows: Pink/Associates: Pink

• A variety of Pauline collections were in circulation in the second century. Fellows: Red/Associates: Pink

• One group of second-century Christians domesticated Paul to their own views by “discovering” and adding the Pastoral Epistles to the Pauline collection they adopted. Fellows: Red/Associates: Red

Christianity Seminar in Spring 2017: Cursing & the Apostle

• Ancient Christian writers, including the writers of the New Testament texts, had no qualms about presenting their founders (including Jesus) or themselves as uttering curses. Fellows: Red/Associates: Red

• Curse stories were considered equally effective for “begetting or confirming belief” as miracle stories. Fellows: Red/Associates: Pink

• If the definition of cursing is suitably broadened to include oaths, imprecatory prayers, and woes, then the victims of the curses of Jesus in the New Testament gospels are more plentiful than a fig tree that did not bear fruit. Fellows: Red/Associates: Red

Christianity Seminar in Spring 2017: Cursing & the Apostle

• The “signs and miracles” and “deeds of power” performed by early Christian apostles and evangelists likely included punitive (“inflicting or intended as punishment”) miracles. Fellows: Red/Associates: Pink

• Despite Paul’s command to “bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (Rom 12:14), the apostle was quick to curse his own opponents. Though it is distasteful to modern readers, both practices—cursing and not cursing adversaries—have equal scriptural basis. Fellows: Red/Associates: Red

• Given the widespread belief in the effectiveness of curses and oaths, readers of Mark and Matthew may have seen a causal connection between Peter’s betrayal of Jesus and Jesus’ death. Fellows: Pink/Associates: Gray

Quest for the Historical Paul• firm belief: he was living and

working history’s final hour

• Romans 13: “11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12 the night is far gone, the day is near.”

• reminder to us 2,000 years later: While history is always done backward, life is lived only forward—one day at a time

Yale University Press, 2017

Context of 2nd Temple Judaism

• Landmark work that shaped a generation of scholarship,

• Compares Paul w/ contemporary Judaism in Paul’s own time.

• Demolishes flawed view of rabbinic Judaism still prevalent in much NT scholarship

1977

Context of 2nd Temple Judaism

• Torah not burden.

• Performing commandments/mitzvot is a privilege: Israel’s response to God’s gracious initiative on Israel’s behalf.

• Not “have to,” but “get to” because of special relationship, unique among the nations.

• [“chosen” has problems too // to supercessionism]

1977

Context of 2nd Temple Judaism• “The Apostle Paul and the

Introspective Conscience of the West” by Krister Stendahl

• Difficult to read w/o bias of tradition, esp. Augustine & Luther

• Luther fixated on Rom 1:17, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’”

• Luther’s deeply troubled conscience provided structural foundation for modern reading of Paul 1963

Context of 2nd Temple Judaism• Paul “called” (as prophet) not

“converted” to Christianity

• Gal 1 “15 But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being,” [//: prophetic call narratives]

• Jer 1: “4 Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, 5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

1963

Context of 2nd Temple Judaism• The word “Christian” was

unknown to him because it had not yet been invented

• Like Jesus, Paul both lived an died as a Jew

• Jewish sectarian literature - majority of the 27 books of the NT written by Jews before there was any such thing as Christianity

• No distinctively Christian institutions, building, or symbols in the first century

HarperOne, 2009

Context of 2nd Temple Judaism

• Not from Judaism to Christianity

• But from violent opponent & persecutor of pagan inclusion

• To: non-violent proponent & persuader of pagan inclusion

• That which he persecuted for God was exactly that to which he was called by God.

Context of 2nd Temple Judaism• Paul is not contrasting law & faith

• Arguing that God has acted in the same gracious manner to Gentiles

• as God did to Jews who had the long-standing benefit of a covenant with God.

• Paul never speaks against Jewish observance of Torah.

• He strongly speaks against Gentile observance.

HarperOne, 2009

Context of 2nd Temple Judaism

• Luther: “The law, like a mighty hammer, is meant to crush human self-righteousness and to drive human beings, made aware of the their sinfulness, to the mercy of their Savior.”

• Paul: law not meant to condemn, but has positive pedagogical functions

• But we have too often read Paul through lens of Luther’s psychological struggle with his conscious

1963

Context of 2nd Temple Judaism

• “Justification by faith”

• not the eternal theological answers to the universal human problem

• But: Paul’s answer to a particular situation involving the relationship between Jew & Gentile.

• Paul’s primary audience was Gentile Jesus follower’s (one of the most important keys to understanding Paul’s mission, message, and identify as a Jew)

1963

Context of 2nd Temple Judaism• Ancient Judaism was not a

“religion of salvation.”

• Rarely focused on personal salvation

• If there is a doctrine of salvation in Rabbinic religion, it is election/repentance

• Ancient biblical paradigm for redemption was Exodus.

• 2nd c. BCE: belief in life after death begins to emerge in some Jewish texts (influenced Paul) HarperOne, 2009

Context of 2nd Temple Judaism• Paul is ultimately not focused on

individual salvation

• Romans is not Paul’s answer to the question, “How can I be saved?”

• Rather, it is his answer to the question, “How will the world be redeemed—and how do I faithfully participate in that redemption.”

• For Paul, the question had great urgency since he believed he was living in the end times.

• Working out my salvation with fear & trembling vs. ours with hope & trust.]

HarperOne, 2009

Context of 2nd Temple Judaism• Not at all clear that the final

judgement for Paul involved each and every person accounting for each misstep

• It is the big sins of the world that need to be accounted for.

• The nations will stand before God as nations, not as individual persons.

• Systemic/Institutional: oppression, racism, pollution, corporate greed [//: Roman imperial order] HarperOne, 2009

Fortress Press, 2016

Fortress Press 2015

First read Pamela Eisenbaum’s “Paul Was Not a Christian”

Was Paul Alone in Athens?

• Acts: When Paul went to Athens, he left Timothy and Silas behind in Berea—and met back up with them in Corinth

• 1 Thess 3:1-3 – Timothy was with him in Athens

Was Paul Alone in Athens?• Acts 17:14 Then the believers immediately sent Paul away to the

coast, but Silas and Timothy remained behind. 15 Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens; and after receiving instructions to have Silas and Timothy join him as soon as possible, they left him…. Acts 18:1 After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth…. When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with proclaiming the word, testifying to the Jews that the Messiah was Jesus.

• 1 Thess 3 Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we decided to be left alone in Athens; 2 and we sent Timothy, our brother and co-worker for God in proclaiming the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you for the sake of your faith, 3 so that no one would be shaken by these persecutions. Indeed, you yourselves know that this is what we are destined for

2. Did Paul go to Jerusalem after his conversion?

• No (Galatians 1): 15 But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. 18 Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days

• Yes (Acts 9:26ff) : “When he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples; and they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple.”)

2. Did Paul go to Jerusalem after his conversion?

• No (Gal 1) - Is Paul telling the truth (protest too much?)

• Yes (Acts 9) - Is Luke undermining Paul?

• In Acts (as in The Gospel of John), speeches and narrators all sound alike, regardless of whether Peter or Paul or others are speaking… [Redaction criticism: Luke wrote them?]

• Ehrman: “Acts is about as reliable for Paul as the Gospel of Luke is for Jesus” (Acts can tell us a great deal about how Luke understood Paul, and less about what Paul himself actually said and did) [more extreme example: Gospel of Judas]

Deuterocanonical (in order of probability

of non-Pauline authorship)

II Thess Col Eph 1-II Tim Titus (50/50 split) (80-90% rejects)

of critical scholarship rejects Pauline authorship of Pastorals

based on writing style, vocabulary, and theology (c.f., Joe Klein & Primary Colors)

(oldest mss of Paul’s letters, c. 200 CE) - includes all of Paul’s undisputed letters except Philemon.

also Col, Eph, and Hebrews— but not 1-2 Tim & Tit.

Undisputed almost certainly

authentic

Deutero-Pauline possibly

pseudonymous

Pastoral Epistles probably

pseudonymous

Romans Ephesians 1 Timothy1 Corinthians Colossians 2 Timothy2 Corinthians 2 Thessalonians Titus

GalatiansPhilippians

1 ThesaloniansPhilemon

based on writing style, vocabulary, and theology

Accessible starting point Good place to read next

College-level Intro to Paul

Upcoming Classes(Con)text & Intro to Modern Biblical Scholarship

Quest for the Historical Paul

Session 3: I Thess, Corinthians, & Galatians

Session 4: Phillippians, Philemon, Romans, Deutero-Paul, faith “of/in” Christ

Session 5: Pastorals, Hebrews, 1 Peter, James, Jude, 2 Peter, Revelation

Session 6: After the Hebrew Bible

2019: Bioethics?

frederickuu.org/fsr